Haunted Observatory - Richard Baum

This is not a Scooby Doo-esque mystery about a guy in a rubber mask trying to scare everyone out of an observatory. It's a more a series of stories about astronomers prior to the 20th Century thinking they've spied something that it turns out they didn't actually see. Or something that they may have seen, but no one else could ever find again.

Sometimes it's a star, or possibly a comet. Something that glows brightly for a day but then dims swiftly and ultimately vanishes. On one occasion, the guy is certain he's found the planet that is throwing off Uranus' orbit. In fact, he'd screwed up so badly he was actually just looking at Uranus. Or the belief, held for quite some time, that Venus had mountains near its poles that rose above the clouds that envelop the world. There's an entire chapter on the notion the Moon might have its own satellites, and the search for those (undertaken for a time in the 1950s by Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.)

The chapters range from 10 to 50 pages depending on the topic. Some chapters I reached the end and still didn't know what had happened. Why did they think they saw mountains above Venus' clouds catching sunlight? In some ways, Baum writes for novices, as he'll spend a paragraph or two giving a short biography for one astronomer or mathematician or another that is relevant to the chapter. 

In other ways, the writing feels very technical. Much discussion of ascensions, of trying to observe this planet or that in superior opposition at such-and-such right declination. Some of it may be relevant - at least one of the mysteries is ultimately due to the astronomer not realizing he twisted the wrong dial when adjusting his telescope and thus getting his values crossed - but at others it just feels like too much detail. I think he's trying to split the difference between the human urge to stare the sky and dream, and the fact that searching the night sky - really, truly searching it - can be a methodical, tedious process. One where the slightest error, or even just an imperfection on the mirror if you're using a reflecting telescope, can throw you off completely.

'On March 10 and 12, 1790, Schroeter had taken great care to distinguish the bright hook peculiar to the southern cusp from the twilight arc. The twilight arc, as we have just seen, he ascribed to scattered light in the upper atmosphere. The hook at the southern cusp, however, he attributed to a ridge of high mountains that catches the direct light of the sun.'

What I Bought 6/1/2021 - Part 1

I hope everyone had a wonderful Clint Eastwood's Birthday Day on Monday. It is the most holy of days on the Reporting on Marvels and Legends' calendar. I observed the traditional ways, watching the Leone trilogy while eating pizza.

The Union #5, by Paul Grist (writer), Andrea Di Vito (penciler), Le Beau Underwood (inker), Nolan Woodard (colorist), Travis Landham (letterer) - Runnin' away from a ghost like they're the Mystery Inc. crew.

The tech bro has the Empire Stone. The heroes' attempts to stop him all fail, not that we see them try much. Doc Croc and his gain take a run at it and don't do any better. Britannia's sort of a ghost that's been lurking inside Union Jack to survive (and keep him from dying when he does stupid crap), but neither of them can stop tech bro alone. Together? Sure, that works. Doc Croc briefly gets the stone, then loses it to the government official, who impersonates a the intelligent corgi and eats it. The day is saved!

I am not sure what this was supposed to be about. The conclusion says Britannia kind of faded away after making some cryptic/uplifting statement. Union Jack's in the hospital, and the rest of the team has apparently vanished. There's no moment where the team really comes together and gets anything done. The public reacts negatively to their actual appearance, but there's no follow-up with that. I wonder if Grist had something entirely different planned for this when it was sort of tying in to Empyre instead of King in Black, but I doubt it. Maybe the point was you can't artificially create a super-team, just because some billionaire wants it to happen? If they aren't on-board with some common purpose, it'll fall apart. Or if it all hinges on one person - Britannia in this case - it's not going to work.

I don't know. I'm just guessing.

Runaways #36, by Rainbow Rowell (writer), Andres Genolet (artist), Dee Cunniffe (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Gert's wisely decided to get the heck out of this book before she gets killed again.

The issue focuses on two conversations involving Gert. One, set several weeks before the previous issue, has Chase come home and find Gert from five years in the future waiting for him. She's 21 now too, and she's here to a) be with him, and b) take him back to the future with her. Chase is actually suspicious of this, especially when Gert won't tell him what she's trying to save him from. He won't go, so Gert's just been coming by to visit and make out with him off-and-on ever since.

The other conversation is between 16-year-old Gert and Victor, at the same time as the previous issue. There's a little tension after that whole Justice Inc. thing, and Victor worrying that since he can't fight against the programming Ultron gave him that makes him geek out over heroes, he won't be able to fight the programming that will make him evil, either. Gert figures everyone on the team is likely to go evil, and she's more concerned about getting left behind. And while they're walking, they find Chase and 21-year-old Gert making out.

I have no idea how this is gonna go. Future Gert seems sad or worried about seeing Victor, which seems like the kind of thing that could lead to explosions and "How could you?!" On the other hand, Gert's not typically the sort to freak out or get violent. So there might just be a lot of sarcasm between the Gerts, and confused stammering among the guys.

 

You can see similarities in the Gerts based on facial expressions - they both love rolling their eyes - but Genolet adds some differences in body language. They're both talking to guys who are taller than them, but Future Gert is constantly looking Chase in the eye, while Present Gert spends a lot of time looking at the ground or just down in general. Future Gert's body language is a lot more confident. Hand on one hip, or just willing to reach out. She's not holding herself in, while Present Gert seems like she's trying to minimize contact with anything for most of her walk with Victor. She won't even let her arms swing at her sides while she walks, she keeps them both on her backpack straps. It's a much more reserved, withdrawn posture.

I even think Present Gert and Victor are viewed at more of a distance than Future Gert and Chase. That may just be a matter of the two of them not standing as close to one another, so the p.o.v. has to be from further away for them both to be in the same panel, but Present Gert seems to sit lower in the panels, and just generally is less of a presence than her future self.

Breach (2020)

'If you do one thing this weekend. Please watch the movie "Breach" on Amazon prime. I need someone to talk to about this absolute BEAST of cinematic guano'

Alex sent me that text two Fridays ago. At 1:30 in the morning. So I watched it the following evening. Hoped for a palette cleanser from Operation Petticoat. Ha! Not likely. 

Some of humanity - 50 million people or so - have fled Earth on vast ships for "New Earth", leaving the rest of humanity to die. Initially it sounds like it's due to environmental collapse, but people mention a plague, so I'm not sure. This guy Noah - get it, because the ship is like an ark? - is illegally snuck on board by the mother of his child, who is also the daughter of the Admiral piloting the ship (Thomas Jane, doing his best to look like Mel Gibson in the original Mad Max.) Those two, and most of the passengers, are put into Cryo, but Noah is a janitor, so he and a skeleton crew, including Clay (Bruce Willis), are still awake maintaining the ship.

Noah doesn't actually know how to do his job, something Clay spots immediately, but there's also the highest ranking officer still awake, who Clay describes as a 'Space Nazi', who tells Noah to be alert to any signs of sabotage or weirdness. So there's an opportunity for paranoia when things start going wrong. What goes wrong is someone unleashed something on the ship that looks like a big leech that gets inside people, liquefies their organs, and then pilots their bodies. As the crew quickly learn, if there's any of the body left, the things can still control it. Meaning bullets (space bullets!) aren't much good. Well now what?

When exactly did Bruce Willis settle in the Nic Cage lane of just taking any garbage role in any movie that comes along? I know it was several years ago, maybe even a decade, but it seems like it's gotten worse. The guy cannot need the money that badly. Needs some hobbies, like Harrison Ford. Safe hobbies, as opposed to Harrison Ford, who apparently likes crashing planes.

For the first thirty minutes or so, I didn't really see what bothered Alex so much. It wasn't a good movie, but there was potential there. A cat-and-mouse game, with the creature slowly picking crew off as it moves towards its objective, while the crew scramble around and waste time arguing and blaming each other. Sure, the solution to killing the creature is painfully obvious extremely early in the movie, as is what the creature is after. But that's not necessarily a deal-breaker.

(Why it's after that is never sufficiently explained. There's mention of experiments, but also that it may have existed before the universe, and it just hates us. Extremely vague, handwavey bullshit all around.)

Then all that gets thrown out the window in the hail of pointless gunfights, confused trips through boring corridors and air vents, and lousy CGI. If you took a shot every time Bruce Willis takes a drink from his flask, you'd die before the shooting started. Noah talks so much about how he's doing this for his family, I thought I'd stumbled into a really shitty Fast and the Furious movie. The end of the movie is ludicrous in the exact same way as the ending to Ghosts of Mars. Holy crap, did I really watch that movie less than 6 months ago?

A Low Bar to Clear

Better for who, exactly?

Limbo starts as a private eye noir story, albeit one in an unusual, even seedier version of New Orleans where fishmen come wandering in from the swamp for a drink or fight. Clay, an amnesiac p.i., is hired by the beautiful singer at a nightclub to protect her from her employer, evil crime boss The Thumb. This, of course, turns out to be more complicated than Clay expects, even allowing for The Thumb being a masked wrestler. The Thumb has powerful forces on call, and not in the typical '80s movie style of thick-necked vaguely Soviet looking goons. And surprise, the beautiful singer is more than she seems, too. 

And so the story shifts a bit. Clay's case, his amnesia, his very state of being in this strange city are all variables in a maze, or a test. Clay's really caught between two deities doing what deities do best: Fucking around with mortals to settle arguments.

Why can't they just scream and throw household items at each other like unhappy married couples do? I guess the better way to think of it would be scientists getting monkeys hooked on cigarettes. Or the experiment my ornithology professor told us about from the '50s. Where the biologists, have determined a turkey's crop can indeed break down walnuts, decided to see if it could break down razor blades. Science!

Compared to that, putting a man in a position to possibly be eaten by a giant alligator is fairly tame.

 

So then Limbo shifts into a story about whether people can change, or if they're doomed to repeat the same actions, the same responses over and over. Is who a person is determined from the moment they're born, or is it the culmination of everything they've experienced up to a particular moment? That kind of stuff. As far as an experiment goes, it's rather flawed by the fact all sides (because there are more players than just the two deities) are cheating to sway things to their desired result.

That there do end up being more forces that get involved than expected is rather a nice touch. And those forces do so for their own reasons, although those reasons probably boil down to "protecting my turf". But they define that in different ways, and they take different approaches. Manipulation and illumination.

On the first read, I wasn't too impressed. I wasn't sure what it was going to be going in, and I'm rarely a huge fan of stories about people getting jerked around by immense, sentient forces. Maybe if you give me the story where the person jerked around decides to hunt that deity down and make their existence hell. The second time through, just taking the story for what it was, I liked it better. 

Dan Watters (writer) and Caspar Wjingaard (artist), who are credited as co-creators, lean into a particular '80s aesthetic that I sort of remember, but don't have any particular affection for. The kind of Miami Vice jackets and color schemes. Clay is usually, when he's in the city, anyway, colored a sort of soft neon blue with white hair. His landlord/caretaker Sandy is a bright green from head-to-toe. His client a deep red, The Thumb mostly purple. Other, ordinary, people are colored more normally. I do enjoy the color work, though. Clay makes his way into the club for the big confrontation, fighting his way through the henchmen. All the panels are drawn from the same perspective: behind him, head hidden under a hooded jacket, and the surroundings get steadily darker, mirroring his descent.

Clay's battle with the teleshaman takes him through a world of TV I recognize, but that's probably as much from when I watched VH1's "I Love the Eighties" as my own memories. Like, I remember daytime talk show stuff like Donahue and Geraldo, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I'm to this day not sure what Max Headroom was supposed to be about. Or hiding a listening device in a He-Man toy. I had He-Man toys when I was a kid - got a lot of mileage out of that Castle Greyskull with my Spider-Man and Ninja Turtles figures - but it's not something I have nostalgia for, you know? So at times it's an experience of, "Oh, I think that's a reference. . .OK," and move on. So if the particular era Wjingard and Watters chose is meant for some greater spiritual meaning in the story, I'm whiffing on it.

Sunday Splash Page #168

 

"Up From the Sewers," in Doom Patrol (vol. 3) #10, by John Arcudi (writer), Tan Eng Huat (artist), Dave Stewart (colorist), Bob Lappan (letterer)

Arcudi and Tan Eng Huat explore a bit into the "superheroes as commodities" notion with this run, as your typical CEO type is trying to create his own superhero team he can merchandise. It's not really working out, she approaches Robotman to license the Doom Patrol name for merchandise and even a TV show. Sure, a TV show about the Doom Patrol is ludicrous - that would never happen, obviously - but it's fiction so we'll roll with it. Cliff agrees because he can use the cash, and reluctantly sticks around to help the kids. Huat doesn't draw them with the stereotypical superhero physiques or faces. For the most part, I'd say they look fairly normal, in that they look weird in the way regular people can look weird. They hardly ever wear uniforms or costumes, the closest probably being Ted (the redhead up above) and most of the crime they fight they sort of stumble into.

So while the team is tangled up in a mess about ancient Chinese artifacts, or a demon trapped on Earth trying to gather souls to empower himself, Jost is trying to turn a profit while polls tell him people want the original Doom Patrol members back. Who are, as mentioned, dead. Arcudi does get a good "Negative Man" gag out of the cast of characters he's made, though.

Or when the team walks away, he simply gets a new team of pre-existing characters (Elongated Man, Metamorpho, the good Doctor Light, and Beast Boy.) There's even an issue where Jost argues with a TV executive and a fanboy writer about what they can do to make the TV show more popular, with the writer being outraged at how out of character they are proposing to make people.

There's also a lot about what Cliff really is, at this point. He's been dead multiple times now. Rebuilt endlessly. His "brain" isn't even an actual flesh-and-blood organ any longer. You'd think after all the weird crap he's been through that might not be so daunting, but Cliff mostly just seems tired of it all. Then the Cliff we see for the first 7-8 issues isn't the Cliff we see for the rest of the series, and that raises its own questions. Huat also gives the Cliff from later on a less streamlined, more clunky, more, well robotic appearance to reflect the difference. Later Issues Robotman can't be nearly as expressive with his face as Early Issues Robotman.

Being part of a team doesn't seem to do any of them any good. Fever at one point decides the best thing for her to do is nothing. Freak flat out hates her power and would love to be rid of it. Fast Forward tries to improve his power, push it further, and about drives himself insane. Ends up on medication to cope with it. Kid Slick's the only one that seems to avoid all that, and it's his getting hospitalized by Fever that prompts her to embrace apathy as a lifestyle. You can't make someone be a superhero. They either want to be, or they don't.

The series ended at 22 issues in Fall 2003. I think it's one of those series often overlooked, but well-loved by the people who find it. A year later, we got the John Byrne Doom Patrol, spinning out of a storyline I think he and Claremont did together in JLA, which did in fact bring back a lot of the original team.

Random Back Issues #61 - Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #19

It was difficult for Flash to make his friends understand that trying to meet Spider-Man by causing lots of grease fires was a good plan, actually.

We last looked at this series 14 months ago, in the Before Times. When thoughts of working from home didn't even exist in my mind. At that point, MJ and Harry were both deemed the biggest flirts in school. Now, the two of them are dating. Like drawn to like.

This issue is mostly about Flash, though, who is sleeping a lot in school and during practice, and hearing about it from his girlfriend Liz constantly. No one knows what's happening, but while on a date with Harry, Mary Jane happens to spy Flash in the kitchen. His dad lost his job, and his new job doesn't pay a well, so Flash is helping support the family. He doesn't want Harry or Liz to know, because they'll either give him a lot of grief, or Harry will just give him a lot of money. Self-sufficiency is nice, but Flash admits that if he does well in football and keeps his grades up he could get a full ride to college. So maybe he should accept help that allows for that.

 

Spidey shows up at MJ's door as she gets home, hoping to talk, but she asks if they can wait until tomorrow. He agrees and swings back off into the night. The next day, MJ goes against Flash's wishes and tells Harry and Liz anyway. Harry laughs and offers money, Liz complains a lot about Flash not telling her (while making some hilarious facial expressions.) Swell friends. Still, when she insists they all need to help Flash somehow, those two listen.

MJ meets Spidey for a rooftop chat. He's dating Firestar (completely forgot about that) and she wants them to reveal their secret identities to each other. He's hesitant because there's another girl he's still hung up on and not sure about. If he shows Firestar who he is, that's a serious step, and he doesn't want to take that if he's still thinking about this other girl. Sensible enough, I suppose. MJ says it's a sign of how good a person he is this worries him, and that he should trust himself to make the right choice. 

 

When she gets home, she finds Liz and Harry waiting, who have come up with a way to help Flash. Harry bought him a pillow that'll help him sleep better, designed by a 'rocket scientist or something.' Liz got him a coffee pot with an alarm clock, so he'll have a 'fresh dose of piping hot caffeine waiting' in the morning. She also tells Flash she's gonna yell at him, but not today. Mary Jane was going to get Peter Parker to tutor Flash, but realized that was a bad idea. Flash agrees. Yeah, Peter's got better things to do than help a guy who makes his life miserable. Like saving lots of ungrateful dickhead New Yorkers from the Vulture or something.

The issue ends with Flash thanking Harry, and Felicia Hardy (who previously made Liz very insecure about her relationship with Flash) apparently setting her sights on the Osborn heir. There's only one issue left, so I'm pretty sure most of these plotlines did not get resolved.

 

Also, there's a Mini-Marvels back-up where the Hulk tries to follow everyone's advice when he takes Betty on a date. But Thunderbolt Ross sends a robot to spy on them and a fight breaks out. Lots of references to not trying any "funny stuff" and Bill Cosby which, yeah.

[10th longbox, 119th comic. Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #19, by Sean McKeever (writer), David Hahn (artist), Christina Strain (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer). Mini-Marvels "Hulk Date", by Chris Giarrusso (writer/artist)]

Operation Petticoat

Cary Grant's a World War 2 sub commander, except his sub was damaged in a bombing raid before ever going on a mission. With the base in danger from the Japanese advance, he gets permission to at least try and get it to another safe base, if he can even get it running. And he'll have to make do with whatever crew he has left or can scrounge up. Which is how he gets a lieutenant (Tony Curtis) with no actual experience in submarines or anything related to serving at sea. Curtis is a hell of a scrounger though, or perhaps black marketeer would be a better word.

As they travel in a clanking, listing, occasionally leaking submarine, things grow more complicated. Not so much due to the Japanese, though. Curtis goes ashore on one island to see what he can "acquire" and returns with a half-dozen nurses, who obviously cannot be left behind in the face of the advancing enemy. Except submarines aren't equipped to be co-ed in the 1940s, so this causes many problems. Mostly owing to having a sub full of guys, or the chief engineer being freaked out by women hanging their underwear to dry in the engine room (that's bad luck, Captain!). There's also one nurse who is klutzy as hell. Hits collision alarms by accident, causes some kind of foul-up right when they were about to torpedo a loaded tanker, causing them to hit a truck instead. All of which drives Grant up the wall. In his typical wryly sarcastic Cary Grant way, of course. No pulling his hair for this fella.

Eh, with the quality of American torpedoes in the first half of the war, they probably wouldn't have sunk the tanker anyway.

The last little bit of the movie, they end up taking on a bunch of pregnant ladies Curtis promised to transport to safety in return for something. I forget what. They also needed to paint the sub for some reason, and with only red and white paint, and not enough of either individually, they mix them and the sub becomes pink. Cue much grousing about humiliation among members of the crew.

I guess because it's supposed to be a comedy, the movie skirts the edges of the war. The sub is retreating already, and in no fit condition to fight anyway, so there isn't much time wasted on avoiding depth charges or air attacks. It's mostly Grant growing increasingly frustrated with all the unexpected passengers, and with Curtis treating the war like a minor inconvenience on his attempts to climb the social ladder. Definitely not a film I'd call a career highlight for either actor.

A Slowdown At Summer's End

August has a couple of new things on offer, but with a few mini-series having ended or things going on hiatus, it feels like a little quieter month.

Marvel has two of the new things of interest. One is Al Ewing and Javier Rodriguez teaming up on a Defenders mini-series. Can't say it looks like my favorite lineup - the Surfer's in there, and I've never found him terribly important, and no Nighthawk, Hellcat, or Valkyrie and I'd take any one of them, not trying to be greedy - but it's worth a look. 

The other is a Darkhawk mini-series, by Kyle Higgins and Juanan Ramirez, who did the third and final section of that Darkhawk one-shot I bought last month. This is almost certainly playing off Powell sending the amulet back through time with all his memories and experiences, and handing it to a new kid. I don't know. That was actually my least favorite of the three parts, but I might at least try it.

Beyond that, there's still Black Cat, Runaways, Moon Knight if the first issue didn't dissuade me. Sure wish I'd seen Way of X #5's solicit before reading issue 2. Would have lessened the shock a bit.

Outside of Marvel, what have we got. A few old reliables. You Promised Me Darkness wraps up its first arc, and Freak Snow concludes. Midnight Western Theatre and Locust will both be available. Locust is now listed as an 8-issue mini-series. Seems like it takes an issue or two with the smaller publishers before they say how long something is going to be if it's a limited series. I also read somewhere that Chaos Agent, the other mini-series Scout was going to publish I was interested in from two months ago, may not be coming out after all. Bummer.

That's it as far as stuff I'd been buying. As for new possibilities, Mark Russell and Ben Tiesma are publishing a series called Deadbox through Vault, about a possessed DVD machine (not a player, but one of those little kiosks you can rent DVDs from) that I'm guessing is going to let characters buy DVDs about their own lives. And Dark Horse has a trade of Phillip Selvy and Drew Zucker's mini-series The House, about some American GIs who shelter in a big mansion during the Battle of the Bulge, and spooky things happen.

That sounds potentially cool, but it also sounds like how that horrible, horrible movie Ghosts of War started. Cause for trepidation, that, but it won't actually be out until October, so there's time to decide.

Black '47

A solider (James Frecheville) in the King's Army returns home to Ireland during the potato famine years. He's not pleased with what he sees. The starvation, families being kicked out of their homes by English lords so they can save on taxes, a legal system that doesn't represent the Irish. The film spends a fair amount of time on that. How you could get some soup if you renounced the Catholic Church and accepted the Church of England. The people starving outside the lord's estate while the grain gets shipped to England. How the layer or servility and politeness the Irish carry is wafer-thin, and there's a lot of anger an resentment.

The United States clearly learned a lot from them.

When the last of his family dies because of this cruelty, he decides to go John Wick on some people's asses. The man who kicked his mother out of her home, the judge who ordered his brother hanged, the bailiff and so on.

That can't be tolerated, the Irish getting the notion they should be treated as people with rights, so the British send a snot-nosed Captain after him, and bring in a former commanding officer (Hugo Weaving) to help track Feeney. Of course, the longer things go, the more he sees, the less Weaving wants to help kill a man who served him and the Crown loyally (until he deserted, but I don't blame him for that. Why die for Britain in Afghanistan?) and came home to all this. Even the Captain seems slightly uncomfortable with what he sees. Not enough to do anything other than his duty, but you know, he looks sad a couple of times. That counts for something.

All the daytime scenes are washed out or colored dully. The sky's always cloudy or shrouded in fog. it makes everything look cold, or maybe dreamlike. Like this is a nightmare world these people are drifting through, just suffering all around. People dying slowly.

Unfortunately, the washed out color scheme means the white subtitles they use whenever Fenney or the Irish speak in Gaelic are really fucking difficult to read. I wasn't planning to need to read when I turned this film, and that added complication was an especially unpleasant surprise.

What I Bought 5/19/2021 - Part 2

Another day, another pair of comic reviews.

Way of X #2, by Si Spurrier (writer), Bob Quinn (artist), Java Tartaglia (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer), Tom Muller (designer) - This comic does not live up to the cover's promise of fun multiple swashbuckling Nightcrawlers.

Legion goes inside Kurt's head and finds something that's been messing with him. In return, Kurt now owes him a favor. So he grabs Dr. Nemesis (in the middle of chatting up Fabian Cortez) and Pixie and they find Legion's disembodied brain in the grasp of these anti-mutant Orchis guys. Legion's brain, with all its many personalities, is being used to model ways to destroy Krakoa from within. Kurt and Pixie deal with the thing causing the problem, but Legion's about to blow, so Kurt shoots his brain.

Legion gets a nice new body in Krakoa and hops inside, then rebuffs Magneto's offer to join in some bullshit project, and Xavier's attempt to, I don't know, half-ass reconcile, and decides to hang out with Kurt. Which is sort of promising.

Oh, and the last page bombshell as to the identity of the "Patchwork Man", who is the thing Kurt suspects Orchis introduced into Krakoa to tear it apart is. . . Onslaught.

Sigh. I should have expected this, right? First Donny Cates with all the symbiote bullshit. Miles Morales is having his own Clone Saga. Heroes Reborn. Onslaught is the next logical step, like Dewey Cox going from cocaine to uppers and downers. You know, setting aside that Onslaught originally caused Heroes Reborn. Once again, as someone who lived through this stuff, I'm befuddled these folks want to revisit the nightmare. 

I'm actually curious to see where this goes, even if Dr. Nemesis' sneering contempt for almost everything is going to get old in a hurry (incidentally, Spurrier's using Elsa Bloodstone the same way in Black Knight.) But if the road goes through Onslaught. . . sounds like the point where you jump out of the car and hope you don't land in a pile of broken beer bottles.

I like Tartaglia's coloring in the more unusual moments. Like the sickly greenish-yellow he gives the panels in Kurt's mind. It gives that sense of strange lighting you see in storms, which makes sense given the state Legion finds Kurt's mind, but also hints at the infection inside, throwing Kurt off his game. And the panel when Kurt shoots Legion's brain. Tartaglia sets it as a red outline against a black backdrop. It's a stark change from every other panel up to that point, and helps draw attention to Kurt actively (mercy) killing someone, which is apparently a big deal for him.

 

I was gonna post that panel, but Spurrier and Quinn did another mass vomiting panel and I have decided I will post those for every issue I buy that has one. Ta-da!

You Promised Me Darkness #2, by Damian Connelly (writer/artist), Anabella Mazzaferri (letterer) - Seems excessive, but can't say that crazy Satanist isn't trying to keep from spreading COVID.

Sebastian and Yuko are brought to where Sage and their people stay by a talking cat named Nuria who coughs up hairballs that transport you places. Meanwhile, the Anti-Everything's right-hand lady is rounding up some helpful lunatics of her own to track down Sebastian and Yuko. One thing I'm unclear on is whether he knows he needs them specifically, or if he's just hunting them because he knows they have powers and he wants them.

Sebastian doesn't want to stay, but maybe Sage mentioning that while Sebastian did start the fire that burned down his house, he did not kill his father will get him to stay. And in Korea, someone found PSY as he's just starting to figure out his super-awesome hit song that will turn everyone into mindless zombies. While aware of it, I'd never actually listened to "Gangam Style" before, so I looked it up on Youtube last week and. . . 

Look, every friend has given me shit about at least one band or artist I listen to, so maybe my taste is crap. Even so, that song is freaking terrible. I couldn't make it past the first 80 seconds before I had to stop and erase it from my viewing history, lest it contaminate the suggested videos.

That aside, Sage is still narrating. The verbal tics are less annoying here, with less backstory to relate. Gives Sage fewer opportunities to wander off-track. It still happens - Sage at one point explains they still aren't back yet because it stopped raining and they decided to go buy groceries - but even just cutting back on it helps.

 

Connelly also evens out the amount of white versus black in the artwork, so there's fewer panels where I'm struggling to figure out what I'm seeing based on a couple of little bits of white among huge amounts of shadows. There's actually enough there to have contrast to play with negative space. Now I'm pretty sure Sebastian just has light streaks in his oddly long hair. And when he actually wants to go with a panel that's overwhelmingly dark, it has a little more oomph. There's one where the Anti-Everything steals this other person's mind reading power and it's this dark thing of a guy's barely outlined face screaming and there's odd-shaped white blobs and circles everywhere, like he's being torn apart.

Sunday Splash Page #167

 

"Just Don't Pick At It And You'll Be Fine," in Domino: Hotshots #1, by Gail Simone (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Jim Charalampidis (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

So Marvel canceled Domino after 10 issues, then, as Marvel usually does, immediately released this five-issue mini-series. I guess they left an entire month between the two, which is more restraint than I'd normally give them credit for.

Something Celestial-related falls from the sky and everybody wants it. Domino's group gets hired by the Black Widow, Silver Fox, and Atlas Bear (the young Wakandan woman who told them Longshot was going to destroy the world) independently to find it. Domino isn't sure she can trust any of them, or count on any of them to follow her orders, regardless what they say.

There's a lot of running around, back-and-forth, attempted double-crosses. Tony Stark gets involved as a competing interest, even sends Deadpool after them. Deadpool then teams up with them, and Stark later decides to help them as well. It all turns into one of those "resist the godlike power" trials. It feels like Domino has to go through a crisis of confidence at least twice, maybe three times. Thinking about it, what I can figure for Simone's less confident version of Domino is that she trusts her power to protect her, so she's comfortable winging it solo. But she can't be certain that protection will extend to her friends and allies, which means she can't just wing it. She has to work against her natural impulses, and that's makes her uncertain. Best theory I've got.

Baldeon's artwork continues to be enjoyable. Not as many people looking psychotic as in the ongoing, but in the circumstances, characters are more likely to be desperate or confused that crazy. Charalampidis' coloring is bright without being overdone during the daylight scenes, and keeps the nighttime scenes from being murky or hard to follow.

All that said, the most enjoyment I got out of the series was theorizing everybody is fighting over essentially Celestial poop.

What I Bought 5/19/2021 - Part 1

I almost found every comic I went looking for this week. The only one I missed was Runaways, which was not the one I expected to whiff on. But it all fell out rather neatly because we can look at two third issues today, and two second issues on Monday.

Black Knight #3, by Si Spurrier (writer), Sergio Davila (penciler), Sean Parsons (inker), Arif Prianto and Chris Sotomayor (colorists), Cory Petit (letterer) - How will Thor escape from his prison within the Ebony Blade? What's that? You say he can create portals with Mjolnir? Never mind then.

Dane, Jacks, and Elsa go hunting for the Ebony Chalice and end up in some mystical wasteland where they encounter Mordred and his sidekick. Elsa's having a lot of fun trying to kill the sidekick while Dane and Mordred take swings futilely at each other. The two of them are interrupted by the land itself creating phantoms that tell them what they want to hear. Mordred shakes of Faux-Arthur's love first, and so Elsa splats Dane's head with her shotgun so Mordred can't swipe the sword while he's confused. Dane regenerates, extremely angry, and Mordred bails. Meanwhile, Merlin's old raven shows Jacks what happened with Sir Percy fought a younger Thor, and then leads her to the Chalice. Which Dane is going to drink from, which Mordred is very excited about.

Given my nature to suspect cutesy surprise reveals and double-crosses, I'm half-expecting the raven to be behind all this. Bitter that it was cast aside into this place by Merlin because 'a wizard's familiar smacks excessive of the pagan ways.' Probably not, although the notion of the raven wielding the sword, the shield, the dagger, etc. is amusing. I'm also wondering if Dane gaining understanding would make him incapable of wielding the Ebony Blade. Mordred figures Dane can't let himself be happy because he won't be able to use the sword, so he at least wants to understand. If he understands, whatever he's going to understand, does that cut him off at the knees?

 

Prianto and Sotomayor go for brighter colors in the flashback to Thor's run-in with Percy than in the rest of the book. Granted, that part is apparently under bright sunlight, but there's also an element that things started out well, that Camelot was a bright and honorable place once, but now it was all leading to a dark and dreary end, full of fog and ruin like the place Dane, Elsa, and Jacks spend the issue. The blade drew out Percy's worst habits and he became something awful. If Dane keeps on, he'll end up the same way presumably.

White Lily #3, by Preston Poulter (writer), Jake Bilbao (penciler), Kumar (inker), Alonso Espinoza (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - I'm honestly guessing on everything past Bilbao, because the credits on the inside cover haven't changed from the first issue's.

Back in action, Lilya gets shot down and has to bail out into Stalingrad. She manages to lure a Nazi chasing her into someone else's grenade trap, and spends the night with a grieving mother who eats bread made of sawdust and has left her deceased son frozen outside. I guess digging through frozen soil would be difficult. Making it back to base, she's ready for more, while Katya and Alexi worry. Alexi worries so much he sort of proposes, and they end up as wingmen. Alexi's old wingman, the captain of the squadron, ends up flying with Katya. And the issue more or less ends after another mission when a downed Naiz pilot is brought in asking the meet the flier who shot him down. He doesn't believe it was a woman, and he's less happy it was a Jewish woman. Well tough shit, Fritz, count yourself lucky they left you alive long enough to satisfy your curiosity.

I'm surprised Poulter didn't spend more time on Lilya making it back to base. The woman who shelters her for the night says she doesn't know how Lilya will get across the Volga to her squadron, and we never find out. The story just cuts to the airfield and Katya being overjoyed when Lilya shows up in the back of a truck. Maybe it wasn't that interesting and Lilya made it uneventfully, but it seems odd to have a character specifically wonder about that and then just gloss over it entirely.

So, with Lovalle Davis' passing, Jake Bilbao, who has been drawing the covers thus far, steps in as interior artist as well. He joins the ranks of Harley Quinn artist Chad Hardin as someone whose work I originally encountered in the Bloodrayne comics I was buying the first few years this blog existed. Unexpected encounter, to be sure. His lines are a bit softer than Davis', characters' faces are rounder. Lilya's hair looks like it got styled a bit more. The inking and shading on faces is cut back a lot, especially for the women. I guess they look prettier. Depends on your aesthetic preferences. 

 

Though there aren't as many in this issue, the flipping of the page on its side for the air combat scenes continues. So was that always something Poulter wanted for the more widescreen effect, or was it Davis' idea and Bilbao is trying to maintain consistency?

Cold Skin

A young man (David Oakes) accepts a year-long position as weather observer on an island somewhere south of Australia. His predecessor died of typhus, according to the extremely ragged looking man named Gruner (Ray Stevenson) that mans the lighthouse. Gruner appears to be the only other inhabitant, until the second night, when it turns out their a race of amphibious humans that live off-shore. 

They quickly destroy his cabin, or rather, he destroys it in his dumbass attempts to fend them off. I really can't see how he thought the firebreak consisting of every book he brought was worthwhile. It's a one night solution, and you've got 362 more nights to go! The fact he has coffee, tobacco, gin, and lots of bullets convince Gruner to allow him haven within the lighthouse, gussied up like a siege tower. Where he finds Gruner has one of the fish-people (Aura Garrido) living there, as his pet. Or slave. Or sex toy.

I guess this movie was for dudes who watched Shape of Water and said, "where's equal opportunity for the men who want sex with fish? Lady fish, obviously."

Anyway, things progress unsteadily from there. Friend (as Gruner calls the young man) makes halting attempts to understand the fish-lady. Even gives her a name. He considers ways to escape, but also ways to finish off the frequent attacks once and for all. Gruner seemingly doesn't want anything to change. There's a whole thing how both of them are running from things they don't want to deal with. Gruner the loss of someone, Friend from World War 1. Except he wound up in his own war, with only a crazy man by his side. There's even a scene the day after a big attack where the two of them wander amongst the dead and dying in a charred, torn up landscape.

Stevenson plays Gruner as unhinged, but ultimately kind of pitiful. He's fine with this life so long as he thinks he has everything under control. It makes him feel like God, he decides who is safe or not, who lives or dies. If someone starts to go against his will, he tries to shout them down, and if that fails, he sort of falls apart. Kind of a classic abuser, although I think he really is falling to pieces, rather than it being a ploy for sympathy.

Friend is torn between recognizing that meeting a new form of intelligent life is extraordinary, and he should be trying to understand them, and being terrified he's going to die and trying to kill them. And we never see enough of their culture to really understand their perspective. They don't seem to get that if you bust down the door of someone's house and tear it apart looking for them, they may stab you when you get close. So what's that mean about how they live under the sea?

I did wonder why Friend didn't just take his supplies and go further inland. It's unclear how big the island is, but there are clearly hills visible in the background. They're getting timber for Gruner's defense from someplace. Get away from shore and let them attack Gruner every night.

The expansive shots of the ocean and the shoreline are beautiful, especially as the weather changes across months. The use of the lighthouse to temporarily spotlight the fish-people is a nice touch. There's some very moody music at times, usually in the quieter moments, that I really enjoyed, but can't describe well. It just captured the isolation somehow.

It's A Society, I Guess

I wonder what the endgame is for the whole "Krakoa" set-up in the X-Books. Long-term, I'm sure it all falls apart somehow and mutantkind ends up fragmented, with a certain group of mutants living in a big house in New York State calling themselves X-Men.

But more in terms of what the creative teams are thinking now about where they're sending things. Maybe that's all Jonathan Hickman's ball, but I assume the other writers are at least being consulted, or bringing some ideas to the table.

Krakoa is described by most of the mutants living there as the wonderful place. Mutant utopia. Much better than all those limited human societies in every way they tell us repeatedly.  I don't mean just by the citizens who live there, ignorant of the secret kill squad with absolute authority to do seemingly whatever they want. I mean even the folks (like ol' Chuck Xavier) who are hip-deep in the ethically questionable shit are convinced they're doing so much better while they simply emulate the worst habits of human societies.

The cronyism (how many mutants who died horribly are still waiting for a chance while Pixie gets moved to the front of the queue after encouraging a bigot to blow her head off with a shotgun on a dare). The convenient loopholes ("we said kill no human, but these intelligent beings don't count as human, so murder the shit out of them"). The hypocrisy (Maddy Pryor's a clone so she can't be resurrected, but so are the Cuckoos and they're all running around. Or hell, the fact Maddy has her own entirely unique and distinct memories not shared by Jean Grey should move her beyond simply a clone). Or the bloodthirstiness (why does a depowered mutant have to be killed in ritual combat in front of a crowd to be reborn with their powers?) It's unclear what sort of educational system they have, beyond having the kids work on combo moves (cool, but maybe of limited practicality).

I assume the writers are intending to highlight the faults of the braintrust running Krakoa. The limits of their thinking. They've mostly agreed to not go with the Magneto/Apocalypse approach of wiping out or subjugating all humans. Closer to Xavier's idea of coexistence. But it's always felt like Xavier intended that as mutants living in a combined society with everyone else on Earth (more like Morrison's conception.) Most of the laws and social mores would already be in place, but tweaked and expanded to be more open and accepting to mutants and their perspectives.

They're still doing that to an extent, since Krakoa's leader communicate with other nations' leader, engage in trade and p.r. battles and so on. They seem quite good at capitalism. But having established their own nation, rather than melding into existing ones, they have to put everything together themselves. They don't seem to have any idea how to do that. They've overcome death (or managed a workaround at least), which is very cool. They've mostly ceased the infighting between different philosophies that's marked most of the X-Men's history. Beyond that, I'm not sure what they're doing.

I don't know if that's on the writers, that they can't conceive of a truly new society or way of doing things. Or it's meant to be on the characters. They've been struggling just to stay alive so long they never thought this far ahead. And dying doesn't matter now, so why worry about it? Like the college kid on their own for the first time who decides if no one's going to make them go to class, they're gonna sleep in as much as they want. Also, they're going to eat a ton of Twinkies all the time because they can do that now. 

No, that wasn't my college experience. Well, some variation of the Twinkies thing was at different times, but not the sleeping in thing.

The know they don't want to do education like humans, but haven't devised an alternative, and it's not clear anyone is actually working on one. There were already systems and models to work off before, so there was no need to devise their own. But if they've dismissed those other systems as inferior human crap, then what's left? Krakoan leadership: *collective shrug and shake of the head*

Nightcrawler's supposedly trying to devise some sort of belief system, or maybe morality in a society that sees death (or dying, or killing) as no big deal, but a) he's seemingly working alone, which rather limits perspective, and b) he's not making any headway.

But if the end goal for this whole Krakoa status quo is for everything to collapse because the leaders did such a lousy job building a functioning society, is that really a great look for your ostensible heroes? Hey, you finally created a place where mutants could feel secure and meet humans on equal terms, with equal protection, but it was a mess of a place predicated on suffering, and pain, and bending your own rules whenever it suited you. 

I suppose it could be laid as commentary on the characters. That this is not the sort of role they were created for, and they're poorly suited for it. That, having created this safe nation, they needed to step aside for other mutants with gifts better suited for creating a fair and just society. The issues in stretching certain characters beyond tolerances or sell-by dates. I don't expect that to be the case.

More likely Krakoa is eventually destroyed in some big event thing by external forces. That way the writers can shuffle the X-Men back to more familiar waters, without having to necessarily paint them as big fat failures. The society would have come together if they'd just had a little more time. Darn that Symbiote-Encrusted Thanos-Blood infused AIM Thor!

The Planets - Dava Sobel

Sobel's approach is to devote a chapter to the major bodies of the solar system, moving from the Sun outward. Each chapter takes a different tack, related either to a particular characteristic of the world, or some spiritual or mythological importance humans have placed on it. 

The Jupiter chapter describes events with many references to astrology and what relation Jupiter's position was believed to have to a particular person or particular day relevant to our study of the planet. Mars' chapter is related through the story of a meteorite found in Antarctica that was originally part of Mars, and appears to have fossilized remains similar to very early bacteria. Mercury's speaks to the mythological Mercury, his traits and specialties, and how the planet reflects them.

Most curiously, the chapter on Uranus and Neptune together is mostly presented as a letter (that I'm assuming is fictional) between Caroline Herschel, sister and assistant to William Herschel, to Maria Mitchell, an American astronomer who discovered a comet in the mid-1800s. It talks all about the disputes over what they'd call Uranus (and similar disputes that were emerging about Neptune), and how they were discovered, and how they were confirmed, and how the discrepancies in Uranus' orbit prompted the search for Neptune through mathematics. As history lesson dressed in a top hat and fancy spectacles. Clever enough I guess, but it felt a little too cutesy for me.

So some chapters are more effective than others. I'm not really reading a book on the planets for astrology or mythology, so that's less interesting to me than just seeing if I can learn something new about the planets themselves, or the story of how they, or their moons, or some other unique characteristic, were discovered. None of the chapters are terribly long, though, so if one didn't catch your fancy, it's a quick jaunt to the next.

'Shriveled and ridiculed, Pluto was altogether stripped of its reason for being after Voyager 2 passed Neptune in 1989. The need for a ninth planet vanished in the realization that Neptune and Uranus balanced each other's orbital anomalies. The calculations that had led Lowell to the prediction of Planet X apparently held no more water than his Martian canals.'

What I Bought 5/14/2021

Did anybody else notice that hour or so late last week where all the Blogger sites were being blocked as containing malware? That was concerning, I hadn't saved last year's posts yet. I really don't know what approach I'll take the day Google decides to just throw Blogger in the trash. At some point they'll decide, "this ain't making us any money," and poof, into the aether it goes.

Anyway, to "celebrate" having to return to working in the office, one book from last week. I tried the other store in town, and they didn't have the last issue of The Union, either. Said the sales tanked after issue 3, which doesn't exactly surprise me.

Black Cat #6, by Jed MacKay (writer), Michael Dowling (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Like Scrooge McDuck, Felicia Hardy oversells how comfortable gold coins are.

The Gilded Saint accepts the Fox' offer. It now owns Manhattan, and Fox and Felicia are immortal and youthful. Felicia is outraged at the double-cross, but tearing the Fox' throat out doesn't work and he escapes. After lying to Spider-Man (who shows up for 3 panels, sorry if you were expecting more based on the solicitation), she tells her guys to get lost and goes to bargain with Odessa Drake. This would seem dicey, given all the stealing and threatening her with borrowed Iron Man armor, but when Felicia and the Fox got immortality, it was taken away from Odessa and her Guild. So that's a good reason for everyone to play nice. So Felicia gets magically "booped" into the Saint's vault.

This feels like it's moving slow. Maybe that's just Dowling's art, which isn't particularly dynamic or exciting. It's fairly realistic, but when he's mostly just drawing people standing around talking, that's not all that eye-catching. Not doing a lot to make that a more interesting prospect, either, in terms of layouts or whatnot. I guess I could mention the fact that during their time chatting, Odessa is repeatedly the one leaning into Felicia's space or trying to touch her.

Still, this issue is a conversation between Felicia and Fox, which feels drawn out. A pair of conversations between her and Spider-Man/Bruno and Dr. Korpse that are quick and to the point. And the thing with Odessa, which is the last 8 pages. That one, I think does deserve the pages it gets, because of the fact they've been adversaries until recently, so that has to be addressed before they can work together.

Sunday Splash Page #166

 

"Wrong Marvel Movie, Domino," in Domino (vol. 3) #4, by Gail Simone (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Jesus Aburtov (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

The issue before this had a full-page splash of Domino basically drooling over Shang-Chi. I'd have used it if I went with the "Domino in a bikini" splash page two weeks ago. Should try for equal opportunity objectification, right?

So Domino got her first shot at an honest-to-goodness ongoing series in spring of 2018, roughly coinciding with the character's big screen debut in Deadpool 2 (the series started in April, the movie was released in May in the U.S.) Gail Simone wrote the book, no stranger to the world of Cable-adjacent characters (see Sunday Splash Pages #5 and #132). 

Where the two earlier mini-series focused on Domino's past, either her questions about it or ours - I assume someone was asking about if she'd been married - Simone gave her a small mercenary team to lead, consisting of Deadpool supporting cast member Outlaw, and old Serpent Society and Captain America love interest Diamondback. Diamondback being a sort of well-to-do upper crust type didn't seem to track with any previous characterization, but oh well. That way they could get hired for jobs and encounter complications, ala Simone's Secret Six, or Birds of Prey. It's a reliable storytelling approach.

Which isn't to say Simone didn't some use of the character's backstory. The first arc was Domino being menaced by two other subjects from the same program that Pruett and Stelfreeze established as having experimented on her in their mini-series. Simone took a love/hate approach for Domino and her luck power. That she sort of blindly trusted it would keep her alive, but it might leave her bruised and bleeding for the privilege. She also made Domino a little more, I want to say spastic? Not so much a cool, composed mercenary. Maybe that's meant to be a result of knowing your power could save your life in the most embarrassing way possible.

David Baldeon was the series artist for most of the run, although he drew very little of the last two issues, where Domino's hired to kill Longshot to save the world. He has a fluid enough line to draw a Domino that looks exhausted, messy, and confused in bunny slippers and an X-Force commemorative t-shirt, but can also thicken them to make characters look extremely intense or psychotic. Which comes up fairly often in this series.

The series got canceled after 10 issues and one Annual, although there was immediately a five-issue mini-series, which we'll get to next week. My biggest issue with this series was stories seemed to just end abruptly, with major points relegated to offhand comments. The first story raises a question of someone on Domino's team being a traitor, and that's explained and brushed off in one panel. The characters would be in dire situations, where it seemed like someone was going to do a heroic sacrifice, then they were simply OK. A repeated, "Is that it?" reaction.

Random Back Issues #60 - Katana #2

Katana's smack talk is still a work in progress.

I think Ann Nocenti's Katana series is the only other New 52 title I still have besides Dial H. Oh wait, no, I bought the tpb of that Giffen and Didio OMAC series a few years back. Nevermind. Anyway, Katana! I haven't read it in a few years at least, so trying to remember what the heck is going on's a treat. There's a bunch of clans based around what weapons they favor, and Katana's after the Sword Clan, who she holds responsible for her husband's death. She tangled with a guy named Coil, who uses a sword like whip in the first issue, but he's got a lot of reinforcements, and it ends with her refusing an offer to join and everyone scattering.

Katana catches up to one of them, the guy up above, who doesn't want to fight her. Instead, he'd rather parley, even agrees to help her infiltrate his family and bring them down. Which involves her attending a social function in disguise as his date. First though, she visits a woman with tattoos over all of her body, Shun the Untouchable. If I remember right, the tattoos can tell you important stuff, but it costs money for a peek and Tatsu's out of cash, so all she gets is a glimpse of a dragon on the foot and a riddle or proverb.

 

While she's trying to make a plan, she gets harassed by your typical drunk-ass bum martial arts master, who throws candy at her, calls her a twit, then kicks her butt when she fights him. He tells her she's got to learn how to disguise herself. He also explains the riddle that if one is past and two is present, then third is the future. Meaning what Tatsu saw is a glimpse of a future?

The big party has a bunch of ladies with double-ended swords putting on a demonstration. Their boss Sickle steps out and asks if anyone wants to accept a challenge, so Katana jumps in and fights the lot of them. She wins, but her sword acts on its own near the end. And since Sickle is her dead husband's brother and someone else who tried to win her heart, he knows who's under the mask. When he tells her to join up or he'll blow her secret identity, she agrees. The better to get close to her enemy.

 

But that'll have to wait because as she exits the party she's accosted by Steve Trevor, who wants to recruit her for that other Justice League. The one that had Vibe in it. Maybe Hawkman? I can't remember. I more surprised that she apologizes for putting her sword to his throat when he introduces himself. Maybe he was the League's public liaison, but I can't picture him being a well-known figure. 

And meanwhile, Killer Croc of all people has taken an interest in her, because her sword was said to have killed the last dragon, and I think Croc wants to level up. From what was sometime interpreted as a dragon, to the real thing.

[6th longbox, 90th comic. Katana #2, by Ann Nocenti (writer), Alex Sanchez (penciler), Claude St. Aubin (inker), Matt Yackey (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer)]

Return to House on Haunted Hill

A sequel to the 1999 movie with Geoffrey Rush and Chris Kattan, which I enjoy more than any reasonable person probably should. The connection is that one of the two survivors of that film, Ali Larter's character, dies early in this film, and her sister gets dragged into the mess. There's some ancient Satanic idol suspected to be within the place, and there's an archaeology professor and one of his former students turned into a relic-hunting merc after it.

I think the people who made this one worried that too many of the victims in the earlier film were too likeable. So you've got the relic hunter and his team of gun-toting goons, and one of the professor's Ph.D. students was sleeping with him to funnel information to the relic hunter. The sister (who runs a magazine that's probably a lot like Maxim) and one of her photographers (who was just trying to be helpful) are caught in the middle.

There's not a lot of open conflict between the sides, because one side usually has enough guns to just order the other around. So the film quickly dives in to everyone splitting up and getting steadily picked off during what's basically a fetch-it quest. Find Object A, return to Point B, reveal Exit C. 

It's a bit more gruesome about the deaths than its predecessor, more shock value and Raimiesque gore. One guy gets drawn and quartered by angry ghosts. Another gets thrown in a furnace by terrible CGI charred corpses and burned to ash. Another has a fridge dropped on their head. Instead of amorphous shadows, or only being able to see the ghosts through camera monitors and not with the naked eye, the ghosts are perfectly visible whenever they feel like it. Most of them have oddly elongated faces or features that are stretched out. The idol is in the depths of the hospital, in an area that is somehow almost organic. Like that part of the building is flesh-and-blood now. Why? No idea.

It's weird, because occasionally the movie will do something relatively subtle. The sister tries to slip away while everyone is arguing, and the one female merc, blurry in the background of the shot, ducks behind a column and follows her until she eventually cuts her off. The movie doesn't see the need to draw attention to it, which is the first and last time I can say that.

What I Bought 5/8/2021 - Part 2

Of the four comics I went looking for last weekend, I didn't expect the last issue of The Union to be the one I couldn't find. So instead of two fifth issues to look at, we've only got one.

Iron Fist: Heart of the Dragon #5, by Larry Hama (writer), David Wachter (artist), Neeraj Menon (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - She's aimed that kick a little high, hasn't she? Or is Sue Richards riding on Danny's shoulders?

Nobody's very happy Okoye killed one of the dragons, but apparently it was so she can absorb its energy and team-up with Danny to save the day. Somehow. I guess if she's got it the evil Hierophant guy can't get it. Can't decide what that guy reminds me of. Demon King Piccolo crossed with the Lich King from Adventure Time? Eh, probably not. The Mother of Mercy's expositing is interrupted by him and Brenda, or Yama Dragonsbane. Who still has not bothered to actually fight Danny Rand. 

It is funny to watch Luke Cage basically no-sell everyone's offense in this mini-series. Super-strong, bulletproof guy is not impressed by all this kick-flippy ninjitsu stuff. Brenda goes charging to unleash some sword attack and surprise! The blade breaks on his skin and he punches her in the head.

Fooh lures the bad guys into chasing him back to Rand Tower, and blows up his gate, trying to close all the gates that way. Maybe it works, maybe it didn't, but the remaining heroes are going to have to fight the big, angry, presumably evil dragon that's been sitting on that tower in the cursed city for the previous four issues.

The farther into this mini-series we get, the more of it that seems pointless. Like, what was the need for the Immortal Weapons to run around trying to protect their dragons and cities? Apparently it was better for Okoye to kill the dragons and absorb their power herself to keep it from Hierophant. Did they have to do all this so the proper person to assume that "honor" would reveal themselves? Because it feels like nobody has done anything of any use in this story. Move the Heavenly Cities? Doesn't help. Hide the dragons? Doesn't help. Smash a bunch of undead ninjas? Doesn't help.

 

I guess Hama could be going for a "heroism is ultimately futile", or "easy solutions are no solutions at all" sort of ending, although I kind of doubt it. But it really feels like Danny might as well have stayed home and gotten a few more hours sleep.