Saturday Splash Page #122

 

"Ouch," in Stellar #5, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist/colorist), Rus Wooton (letterer)

A 6-issue mini-series from 2018 focused on Stellar, a child turned into a super-soldier of incredible power, at some point long after that. It's hard to say how long, as time is for some reason inconsistent in her universe, as a result of the war she was modified to fight.

The war may be over, but the other products of the project are hunting her, though the reasons for that are unclear. They attack her on sight, but also want her help dealing with the member of the project deemed most dangerous, a man called Zenith. That's him getting some cheap dental work. He'll heal up in a few panels.

A lot of things in this story are malleable. Time, the character's motivations, the war itself. The other members attacking Stellar, then expecting her to help them fight Zenith. The war is supposedly between their universe and another one, but when Stellar and Zenith supposedly reach that universe (in the back half of the mini-series), there's no sign of the war. 

So the reasons change, the causes change, but the players don't change, not really. Zenith may be free of whoever created him, but that just means he's building war-bots and portals to other universes for his own ends now. Are those good ends? Another possibly malleable thing. There is a version of Stellar in that other universe, minus any powers, but plus a daughter (who also looks exactly like a younger Stellar.) Zenith abducts them and creates a family, for decades. He plays the role of family man. Sweater vest, spectacles, all polite and contrite when his wife (the older alt-Stellar), makes apologies. Yet as soon as it's he and Stellar in his garage, here come the monologues, the sneering, the robots.

Stellar had, after the way, worked for an orphanage/temple place, helping however she could, mostly by collecting bounties. But in that other universe, where there is no fighting, where she goes literal decades without seeing Zenith, she does nothing. She lives in a crappy apartment, she takes no lover, forms no family. She doesn't age, but Blevins makes her look old and tired. Stringy hair, sunken cheeks. No spark, no crackling energy or glowing eyes. Until she meets Zenith and she has to fight. 

As soon as he appears, all her focus is on destroying him. She had seemingly been content to avoid him and everyone else in her old universe, but now, all she can think about is finding and killing him. She isn't happy, but she's more expressive, more animated. Moves with a purpose, shoulders back, fists clenched, rather than wandering aimlessly, head down, shoulders slumped.

There was some backmatter after the final issue that hinted there might be more to come, but to my knowledge, it hasn't happened yet.

What I Bought 12/6/2018 - Part 2

Does it feel like a lot of board games for kids lately are about bodily secretions? I saw one about popping pimples, and another about dog poop. I guess either one would be better than Mouse Trap. Could hardly ever get the dang Rube Goldberg trap to function properly. We have two mini-series to look at today. One is wrapping up, and the other is just starting. The cycle of life.

Smooth Criminals #1, by Kurt Lustgarten and Kirsten Smith (writers), Leisha Riddel (artist), Brittany Peer (colorist), Ed Dukeshire (letterer) - How difficult is it to apply those dot things she has under her eyes? Also, necklaces seem like a bad accessory for a cat burglar.

Brenda works in a computer science lab for a loser of a boss who makes her clean up some disused storage space. Where she finds a cryo-tube with Mia Corsair, cat burglar, inside. Mia bails, but Brenda hacks a bunch of stuff to guide her to where Brenda is so they can talk. Ultimately they agree to work together to steal some diamonds, but the government (or guys in black suits and sunglasses, anyway) know Mia's loose. And Brenda's shitbag boss pinned it all on her. That's not a bad bit of set-up for a first issue, certainly by today's standards.

Could you actually have done all the crap Brenda did - messing with street lights and fire stations and ATMs - in 1999? Were there enough cameras around all over the place to be able to track a lady running as fast as Mia that easily back then, especially given the resolution of security cameras then? I know the Nineties were the time of movies like The Net and Hackers or whatever, where computers were Magic. But I was also under the assumption those movies were written by people who did not understand the Internet or computers any better than I do. Which is to say, not at all.

I like the art. I can't assess the accuracy of the fashions, but I can never do that. Lot of motion lines getting used for emphasis, but that's OK. They aren't distracting, just something I noticed. I like the contrast between Brenda's awkwardness in most situations, and her almost maniacal grin whenever she can start messing with computers. I'm surprised she's as calm teasing a lady she thawed out of a weird tube as she is in the restaurant, but maybe she's riding the adrenaline high after maneuvering Mia where she wanted her. Riddel used more small panels for the conversation in Brenda's room, compared to earlier in the issue. Seems to play up how small her room is, and how tightly the two are now crammed together. They're making a partnership but, whether they wanted to or not, they're going to be in this together.

Stellar #6, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - She looks pretty mad. I think not enough of you bought this series and she's coming to destroy your illegally torrented fan-translated manga scans.

Stellar resumes trying to kill Zenith, but is halted by the old, other universe version of her, who married Zenith. Even after he eventually explained everything about how he and Stellar try to kill each other, and they're from other universes. She tells him to show Stellar he still has the gateway machine. He does, then tries to kill Stellar. That doesn't exactly work out for him, and she ends up back where she started the series. Or maybe not, since he said he destroyed that place. Maybe his machine went to still another alternate universe. Or he was lying, just to be a dick.

You know, there was that whole thing in the first issue about time behaving oddly, and they never came back to that. Little disappointed by that. I would say the series is about the futility of not letting go of the past, but I'm not sure about that. Stellar seemed like she was at least considering letting it drop, then Zenith took his best shot, and it backfired. He could never accept that she had her reasons for wanting him dead, and just letting it drop. If she hit him, he had to hit her back, only more. Which only seemed to convince her she still needed to kill him.

But was she right? He said he'd abandoned building killer robots, wasn't trying to conquer or destroy this world. The question is whether we're supposed to believe him. I mean, he has a robot in his home, but maybe it isn't a killer robot. If so, and if he could have just trusted his wife's sales pitch to Stellar, then let her go home, he might have been home free to enjoy his life. Or Stellar could have given up looking for him decades ago and just had a life of her own. But neither of them would quit, although things seem to have worked out better for her than for him. Unless his healing abilities are really impressive.

Zenith certainly seemed sorry or perhaps ashamed in the panels where his wife is trying to convince Stellar to let it go, but once it's just to the two of them in the garage, he's back to that maniacal grin. I could almost see it as him believing that she just would not leave it, and so he had to try just to preserve what he'd built, but he was enjoying it too much. He was monologuing and shit-talking and everything. If it was really just about protecting what he had, he'd have done it quickly and been finished. So he really couldn't change, although that raises the question of why the two of them can't? The criminal Stellar caught in the first issue and brought to that little sanctuary was still there at the end, and seemed a somewhat changed being. Is it something intrinsic to Stellar and Zenith being able to live as long as they did? Decades feel like only weeks or months, and they could have dropped it given a couple of centuries? Seems unlikely.

What I Bought 10/21/2018

Alex asked me to tag along to a gig on Sunday, and so I took some time to grab a couple of last week's books while I was in town. It probably says something about me that Alex thought I'd be there by noon, and was calling me at 12:10 when I hadn't arrived yet, even though he wasn't planning to leave until 1:30. I don't bat an eye when my dad is 10 minutes late for something, or Alex for that matter.

Unstoppable Wasp #1, by Jeremy Whitley (writer), Gurihiru (artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - It's a cute cover, I really don't have anything more substantive to say.

Well, I didn't read the brief ongoing the new Wasp had a year or two ago, but it's reasonably easy to follow along. Nadia has her own group of young lady scientists, and they invent cool stuff part of the time, and help her fight crime part of the time. Crime, in this case being AIM, back to being evil after that stint where Sunspot was their boss, and doing something to prepare for Hank Pym. Pym being Nadia's father, who she thinks is dead. And who I thought was dead. Isn't Ultron still just Ultron, but he thinks he's part Pym? Or maybe he is part Pym. It was Hank's brain patterns he was based on, so I guess he's technically always been part Hank, the poor genocidal robot bastard.

The book feels pretty cheerful, despite all that looming stuff about Nadia's dad that I guess the Avengers haven't told her. She and her friends seem to be having fun, cracking wise and whatnot. The Guruhiru team's artwork is very bright and expressive. They draw Nadia as having freckles, which, I'm trying to think of superhero characters with freckles. Jimmy Olsen, I guess, if you count "Mr. Action". I feel like Siryn does, depending on the artist. The little drone hovercraft her friends remotely pilot look cool, and fit the wasp motif.

All that said, something didn't click. There's a whole thread where there are going to be a bunch of investors coming by to see if their lab is worth buying into, and Nadia's been slacking on the super-science. I can see how it's important for her character (and a connection to her dad, who probably should have stuck to super-science and stayed away from superheroics). Plus it connects to the friendship between her and Janet (who is helping her with the business side of things), but I feel like it's going to distract from the subplots among her friends, or trying to stop AIM, or Nadia dealing with whatever she's going to learn about her father. The things I'm more interested in seeing play out. So I'm on the fence about buying issue 2 now.

Stellar #5, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - What you see on the cover is pretty much what you get for the first half of the issue. Which is nice. Truth in advertising, and sometimes you just want robot smashing.

So the older and younger versions of Stellar are gone, taken somewhere by Zenith. She's left wandering for some time, asking people if they've seen them, getting no response until someone recognizes the photo and gives her a lead. And it leads back to. . . Zenith, who has made himself a seemingly happy family with them, if the photos on the wall are anything to go by.

That was a little strange. I still haven't figured out the mother and daughter both looking like Stellar. One of them, sure, but both? Zenith sparing her starts to make a little more sense. Why hadn't he killed her like he did all the other members of their team? Well, he had some sort of interest in her. And he feels he's moved on, made a family, has grandkids now (although he's also taken the time to get himself some death bots at some point). Whereas Stellar, hasn't. Even before she was spending all her time trying to track them down, it seems like she wasn't doing much. Almost no friends, crappy little apartment. Is she afraid of wrecking this world, that she'll taint it if she tries to immerse herself in it? So she stays on the fringes, watches, but doesn't really live in it much.

It's neat two watch how Blevins draws Zenith differently over the course of time. We first see him, he's this techno-organic monstrosity. Like he says, reborn for war. When he found her last issue, he's wearing a stylish hat and coat. The power is still there if he wants it, but he's not trying to impress or terrify anyone. By the time Stellar finds him at the end of this issue, he's dressed like a grandpa. Spectacles and sweater vests. Probably about to settle down and watch his programs with a cup of tea (coffee keeps him up nights). He's been the one we keep hearing was so scary, so terrifying, reveled in being this super-power, killing who he wished. But maybe that was who he had to be and he's not that any more. Or maybe he is, he just hides it better. Stellar is still wearing the same kind of raggedy trenchcoats she was wearing when this series began. She's stuck in place.

One thing I'm waiting for is whether we'll see Stellar really cut loose before the end here. The first issue, we kept seeing her as a glowing yellow human silhouette. She hasn't done that since, even when she's ostensibly fighting for her life against Zenith, or lashing out in a fury. I'm curious to see if it comes out here at the end, and what the end result would be. Probably a lot of death and destruction.

What I Bought 9/21/2018 - Part 1

I only found three of the four books I was looking for from last week, and the one I missed is the one I wanted the most. Typical. In other news, it was a pretty exhausting weekend. Enjoyable at times, frustrating at others. The pitfalls of having an extremely social friend whose works requires him to be around lots of people.

Multiple Man #4, by Matt Rosenberg (writer), Andy MacDonald (artist), Tamra Bonvillain (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - And that was the last time Jamie asked Layla to do his laundry.

Emperor Madrox, unsatisfied with decapitating the duplicate last issue, travels back in time to stop him there. Which leads to the fight between two Madroxes we saw in Hank's lab in issue 1. The issue keeps jumping to all the dupes sent into other timelines to find help, and how they became the mishmash heroes that show up at the end of issue 1. Which we see here, from their perspective. The issue ends with the Emperor's top general (also a Madrox, natch) arriving just after the mishmash Madroxes left to return to the future. So the whole thing loops back around on itself and the Emperor has by that time already been absorbed (in issue 1) by the duplicate he will decapitate in the future (in issue 3).

I have no idea what the ultimate point of this is going to be. Half the Jamies just stumbled into their powers by accident. The one that didn't get picked back up is on the Marvel Swimsuit Illustrated universe, and probably drank himself to death. I heard the New Mutants mini-series Rosenberg wrote ended like it was just a midpoint on a larger story he's telling, possibly to pop up in Uncanny X-Men. No true conclusion. Is this going to tie-in as well? Is all this time travel nonsense going to cause X-Men Disassembled? At least Wanda won't have to take the blame for this one.

MacDonald's art continues to be fine. I enjoyed the touch of showing the former Emperor's fingers still partially sticking out of the Jamie that absorbed him, since the process isn't entirely complete yet. It's kind of creepy, especially when you figure the dupe didn't go willingly, so it's a bit like being dragged underwater to drown. The other timelines are sort of interesting, but not there long enough to really care much.

Stellar #4, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - That little air car thing looks like it'd be fun to drive.

The doorway to another universe led to a world just like theirs, only not destroyed by war. Stellar's been there for some time, long enough the people who met her when she ran through the portal are old men now. And there's a kid that looks a lot like her. Unfortunately, if she tried to keep Zenith from making it through, she failed, and he's found her. Both hers.

What odds do you give the portal isn't to an alternate world, but actually to the past of their own, and the fight between Stellar and Zenith is going to trigger the cataclysmic war that resulted in them being used as guinea pigs for a super-soldier project? Has to be even money at this point.

Lot of close-ups on Stellar's eyes in this issue, various emotions, none of them happy. Haunted looks, frightened, angry, lost, but the one scene where she actually appears happy, meeting what appears to be a younger version of her, the view maintains a little more space. The panels may focus on her face, but it's the entire face, just a bit more distance. It's interesting that scene is followed by showing us how the adult version of her is living: In a crappy, barely furnished apartment. It seems like she could have a better place if she wanted, but she opts not to. Because she's trying to maintain a minimal presence in a world that isn't hers? She tells the bartender that other than him and the professor, she can't think of anyone else who would call themselves her friend. She's been there 30 years, and she has two friends?

Zenith presents a bit of a contrast. I doubt he has any friends, but he's shown as smiling in almost every panel he appears in, or at least looks relaxed. Granted he has a big surprise he's planning to spring, but he also really likes the the world they're in. I'd be curious if he's made more effort to make friends than Stellar has. Figures he's on this world now, why not?

What I Bought 8/17/2018 - Part 1

With a combination of timing and luck, I've managed to find every comic I wanted this month that's come out. Granting there haven't been that many, with so many books being delayed. Anyway, here's two books at their third issues.

Multiple Man #3, by Matt Rosenberg (writer), Any MacDonald (artist), Tamra Bonvillain (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Going off the covers we've seen, this is probably the weakest one of this mini-series. It's not bad - Marcos Martin is hard-pressed to do a bad cover - I just don't quite like it as much as the others. The intentionally jumbled nature makes for a mess.

The Madrox army is busting down the doors of the resistance. Jamie gets Forge to build a few time travel bracelets and sends the un-altered versions of those weird Jamie dupes with the powers into the future to do. . . something. Find help, somehow. Then he's captured, and Jamie and Layla's son is executed (Layla is somewhere else, fortunate for Jamies). At least they do that off-panel, although MacDonald isn't really doing graphic violence much anyway. The Mystic Madrox gets one between the eyes and it's a small hole and he falls over. Jamie is brought to Emperor Jamie, they blather at each other, and then the Emperor chops the other Jamie's head off.

I thought Jamie's brilliant plan was going to be to try and absorb the Emperor, the way he did the dupe he fought in Hank's lab. I don't know that it would have worked, if the Emperor is essentially Jamie Prime now, but watching him try it as a big play only to fall flat on his face would have fit with the tone of this book. Think that line from Spaceballs: 'This is why evil will always win, because good is dumb.' This Jamie's a putz. Maybe that's because he's a good dupe produced from an evil Jamie Prime. It's how Emperor Jamie conceives of "good", so any duplicate he creates that's good is a loser. Or Rosenberg just didn't want to write a Jamie that is at all competent.

At one point, Layla's son points out they've lost their Hulk, and Jamie replies: 'Ooooh. The Hulk. That's why he was green. . . I didn't get that for some reason.' At the end of the previous issue, just before Hulk Madrox exploded, Jamie was telling the opposing army they were making a mistake making him angry, which sure as hell sounds like he's making a Hulk reference. He could be making a joke, but it isn't really presented as such, it's more like he's just a moron.

And sometimes that's funny. He tries to block the door with his body, until one of the dupes reminds him what bullets do to doors. His attempts to lie to Emperor Jamie. But there's still that disconnect where the series seems like it wants us to take this at least somewhat seriously - that Emperor Jamie is a Problem and it needs to be fixed - but you can't take this well-meaning duplicate Jamie seriously at all.

Stellar #3, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - What are those little lemurs that have the giant sad eyes? That's what that thing has. Probably knows what happens to the faithful steed in those kinds of settings.

Stellar spends years stranded on her homeworld, just her and that critter on the cover. Then she's attacked by her remaining two friends, altered by Zenith. She's captured and brought to him, and we learn the war that's torn the place apart is actually with an alternate universe. Which Zenith has opened another gateway to, I think. Stellar just wants to go back to the world she was on when the series began, but that's not going to be an option here.

Curious choice to gloss over the years she spends alone in a couple of pages, or maybe to even do that at all. I'm not sure why the time jump was necessary, or what the point of it all is. Stellar doesn't seem noticeably changed, other than her external appearance. She still doesn't want anything to do with Zenith or his plans. She still asks them to leave her alone or she'll kill them. Neither of those points suggests she had come to the conclusion she needed to hunt Zenith down and end things. She wants to leave in peace, and is only involved in whatever is going on when it comes knocking on her door.

It could be the skip forward was to give Zenith a plausible amount of time to get his plans to a certain point. But we don't have any frame of reference for how long it had been since Stellar split off from the group, or how smart Zenith is, so they could have said it took him however long they wanted. We don't have any evidence to contradict it, because about all we know of Zenith is he enjoyed killing with his powers, and Stellar was afraid of him.

Zenith, in addition to modifying a couple of his old teammates with some sort of liquid metal stuff, also found himself some giant robots. Those remind me of the ones from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was playing off a slightly earlier era of sci-fi/adventure stories than his other designs, but it still looks pretty good. Their design is different enough from Apogee and Aphelion to show that they're something leftover he cobbled together, while the former teammates look more like something he came up with himself. He'd done the same to himself, only he uses it a little better than they do. It looks like solid armor sometimes, and other points it's more fluid. He throws a punch at one point where his fist extends and it flows around Stellar's arm to hit her in the stomach. Blevins blurs and reduces the detail and contrast in those areas to show their less defined nature compared to the more solid parts of Zenith.

What I Bought 7/21/2018

I've actually had two quiet weekends in a row. It was fantastic, almost relaxing.

Stellar #2, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooton (letterer) - I'm sure her doctor told her that was a perfectly normal test to run, but I think she should have questioned it a bit more.

The sudden appearance of Stellar's former comrades-in-arms was not a hallucination or weird time flux, they really are there to capture her. Which they do. Then they travel to another world, to try and capture another former member of their group, which goes less smoothly. It does result in Stellar being free of confinement, but now she's the one stuck dealing with Zenith.

The main part of the issue is really flashbacks to how the five of them were originally selected and turned into these weapons as children. Stellar is the one who hated what they'd became, and most readily took a chance to get away. The three who captured her, assuming Umbra is representative, seem to have simply accepted it. If nothing else, their lives as prized weapons were better than what they had as refugees before. Zenith is the one who embraced the power, took the whole, "I am superior, I can do whatever I want," approach. Stellar and the others' homeworld appears to have been devastated by the war (or by Zenith?), so what are they doing this for? Umbra suggests the team reunited to stop Zenith, but why? He makes it clear he doesn't want to be there, so are they under orders, or did they choose to deal with an out-of-control former teammate?

Stellar never reaches the point of being a glowing yellow thing in the shape of a person at any point in this issue. Even when she's fighting her old friends. Which is a change from last issue, when she went to that level against them right off the bat. I don't know if that's because they dropped her before she had the chance, or she made a conscious decision not to. She asked them to take the fight elsewhere, away from civilians, and they were unconcerned. Maybe she felt the best option was just to lose quickly, so they'd leave.

She doesn't power up fully against the giant creature she tangles with at the end of the issue, either, but she doesn't really need to. I'm more interested in how Blevins colors it, a sickly yellow-gray over its entire body, even its claws, with all sorts of lines running over and through it. Like it's skin is translucent, and we can see some of the inner workings, circulatory system and what passes for the creature's guts.

This issue had less to it than the first one, which had to spend more time setting thing up, but I'm still intrigued.

What I Bought 6/23/2018 - Part 1

There wasn't a single comic I wanted that came out last week. I did, however, find all the comics I was still looking for from the week before on a weekend jaunt. So let's look at those instead.

Copperhead #19, by Scott Godlewski (writer/artist), Jay Faerber (writer), Ron Riley (colorist), Thomas Mauer (letterer) - The cover and the final page of the issue mirror each other effectively.

The thing unearthed in the last issue looks like a glowing blue rock. It glows the same color as some antennae on the back of the native species heads. Except the antennae are actually parasites, and the native species are suddenly being very aggressive in approaching the town. Hickory's bosses are excited and pushy, but the artificial humans have a plan of their own, involving some group they belong to, indicated by a tattoo. The sheriff and the Mayor are trying to figure out what Hickory is up to, and Clara is trying to reconnect with Zeke, who is struggling to process that Clara isn't his birth mother, that she killed his mother.

A lot of plates spinning, which, since this is supposedly the last arc, makes a certain amount of sense. If there's going to be any resolution or payoff, it has to happen now. Be interesting to see if Faerber and Godlewski can pull it off, or if they're even planning to do that.

Scott Godlewski, who was artist for the first 10 issues, is back. There's a marked increase in the consistency of characters' sizes and proportions. Budroxificus looks suitably large, even when he isn't drawn to be intimidating. Sheriff Bronson is working with him, and Mister Hickory thinks he's got Boo wrapped around his finger, so neither is intimidated by him, and he isn't drawn in a way that suggests they are. No towering over them imposingly. But he still fills panels, because he's a big Cypabaran (which I just now realize is rearranging "capybara" and that's what he's based on).

Stellar #1, by Joseph Keatinge (writer), Bret Blevins (artist), Rus Wooten (letterer) - That's one way to kill a giant space monster. If only the pilot had buckled his safety belt first. . .

The series, so far, is taking place on a single world devastated in some major war that spread across the galaxy. Civilization hasn't collapsed entirely, but things are in flux, and a lot of people are struggling. The main character, named Stellar, was a super-soldier designed to win the war, and opted to go a different way at some point. Which put her in conflict with others like her. Or she's still in conflict with them. Time may also be unraveling, things are jumping around, so that I'm not always sure how we got from Point A to Point B. Or Stellar is hallucinating on that last page.

Blevins brings an interesting visual approach. It's the ruins of all those 1950s sci-fi pulp covers. The spaceship spaceships, the remains of giant robots and big statues like I remember from the covers of some version of Asimov's Foundation books. It takes something that the reader has some past visual reference for, and shows it as dead, maybe to give a scope of the destruction, or the level of fall from the heights they once were. Blevins is doing the color work as well, and in the flashback sequences, everything is dominated by yellows and oranges, vivid colors. In almost every one of those panels and pages, people are being vaporized, incinerated, or are being presented with the threat of those fates.

The rest of the book is done in cool, blunted shades. Even when it's showing some alien arthropods devouring the remains of some dead giant, the viscera is dull reddish-purple. Stellar wears a monk's robe and hood, concealing the old outfit she still wears underneath. Her face is more lined around the eyes - almost like Blevins made certain some of his initial sketch lines would show through as strain or sleeplessness - and she's paler. On the last page, when it looks as though the battle is starting up again, the oranges and yellows haven't returned, which is why I suspect it's a hallucination, or echo of the actual battle, long finished.

I don't entirely know what is going on, or where Keatinge and Blevins plan to go with it, but I'm intrigued.