What I Bought 3/19/2020

Both of the comic stores in town were open last week. One wasn't letting people inside, but you could call ahead. The other one was still letting people walk in. Anyway, I rolled the dice and entered a building with other human beings in it, and here's a comic.

Deadpool #4, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciler), Wayne Faucher, Al Vey, Livesay, Jamie Mendoze, Tim Townsend, Derek Fridolfs (inkers), David Curiel (color artist), Irene Strychalski (artist), Rachelle Rosenberg (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - I think the Homeowner's Association will have some problems with that lawn display.

Wade fights Kraven. Wade loses an arm. Fight continues. Wade's knights show up to get involved - again. Fight continues. Wade maneuvers Kraven near the water. Kraven gets eaten by the giant tentacle monster. Wade has funeral for murdered bird chancellor guy, considers abdicating throne. Elsa talks him out of it. Kraven turns up not dead, somehow.

There's also a two-page story, drawn by Strychalski, where Wade tries to cheer up Jeff the Land Shark by dressing as Gwenpool. Yikes.

Not the most thrilling start to this run. I guess it's important that Deadpool make the decision to be king, since he basically fell ass-end into the job by killing the previous king via 40 grenades. But the fight against Kraven, which spanned 2.5 issues, was not terribly interesting. Maybe more time spent on Kraven killing Wade's citizens and Wade trying to catch the killer would have worked better. I don't buy Kraven, especially not a Kraven that's actually just his dumb kid, as being this big a threat to Deadpool.

Situation is not helped by the fact I still can't really figure out what Bachalo's shooting for with his layouts and whatnot, although it's not as noticeable in this issue as the previous two. The part where he captures all the parts of Kohlaab in a net, and then someone starts shooting arrows. The net panel is big, then the two where one arrow flies past and the next hits him in the chest are off to the side, maybe a quarter as large. It seems like conveying information is not a major concern for him. I don't know what it is he likes about those small panels almost entirely filled by a character.

What I Bought 2/21/2020 - Part 2

Another week in the books. Hooray! Hopefully I get more rest this weekend than I did last weekend. But first, two comics to review.

Deadpool #3, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciler), Wayne Faucher, Livesay, Al Vey, Jaime Mendoza and Victor Olazaba (inkers), David Curiel (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Bachalo really likes to draw Wade with one pinky extended when he's holding swords. Is Wade trying to be classy? Because it just seems like a good way to lose a finger.

Elsa's bullet dumps Wade in another dimension for about three pages. Then he's back and angry at her, and Kraven's attacking again. Wade consults his trading cards to learn what his "knights" can actually do, then tricks them all into leaving so he can fight Kraven. They fight a bit, Wade is somehow slowed down more by a spear in the gut than Kraven is by a sword running through his torso. Not sure how that works. Then they keep fighting.

Which kind of makes the whole teleportation bullet pointless? We're right back where we were at the end of last issue, minus Wade's knights. I do appreciate they aren't protecting Wade because they particularly like him, since he spends a lot of time insulting them. They just know Kraven would become King if he kills Wade, and that would be bad for all the monsters. Sound reasoning.

There are still some panels where I scratch my head at Bachalo's choices on panel layout, although it definitely feels like he used more of the available page space than last issue. I did like the bit where Kraven is standing on a ledge looking down at Wade, and then later, it's reversed, with Wade looking down at Kraven. The fight between them was solid. The little lines on Kraven's cheek from the force of Wade's punch. Kraven telling Deadpool all that jumping around isn't effective, then immediately getting stabbed, then Wade complaining a page later that he had a joke he couldn't make because his throat was cut.

The overall concept behind the story isn't bad, but the pacing is not the best.

Sera and the Royal Stars #6, by Jon Tsuei (writer), Audrey Mok (artist), Raul Angulo (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Oh, look at these two, lording their twin-headed dragon over everyone. La-de-dah. It is pretty sweet though, I'm insanely jealous.

Sera returns home to rescue her surviving family, while the Stars go to ask the Pleiades for some guidance. The Seven Sisters have a few options to understand what's been done to the Stars, but it's pointed out that if they simply kill the two Dracos, their spell will be broken. They also know the Dracos are tracking Sera, so Antares goes to help her, while the other two continue on. The helping doesn't go well, as one of the Dracos attacks and does something to that gem that has replaced Sera's heart, causing a shockwave, that devastates her city and kills her father, while her sister is abducted. That's what you call losing on all counts.

I wonder if the Dracos are even behind the problem, or if they're just taking advantage of the situation. Or being taken advantage of by the real mastermind. If there is one. The Demon Star would seem a possible candidate, but I'm wondering if Mitra not up to something. Why place Regulus inside Sera, which limits his ability to act, rather than guiding her to him, so he could be fully awakened like the others? Seems to have backfired a bit if the goal was to give her power to rely on.

Kind of curious about the thought process behind the Pleiades' design. Other than the youngest looking of the seven, they're all basically naked ladies wearing masks with long pieces of fabric just kind of floating. I mean, fine, they aren't human - the conversation about eating between Alderbaran and Antares made that clear - so no reason they necessarily would wear clothes. But then, why the masks? You're not supposed to gaze upon an oracle's true face?

What I Bought 1/9/2020

I tried to pick up last week's books while I was visiting Alex. But the first store didn't have Deadpool, and the only copy of Black Cat was the ugly variant cover version. Like I give that much of a crap about Earth X (although I'm curious to read it someday, just to see what it's like). Then the second store had Deadpool, but not Black Cat. And I wasn't going back to the first store, so here we are.

Deadpool #2, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciler), Wayne Faucher, Livesay, Al Vey, Jamie Mendoza, Victor Olazaba, and Tim Townsend (inkers), David Curiel (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - I have no idea why Elsa and the tentacle monster are panted gold.

Wade's trying to shoot a video promoting how great Monster Island is, except some of the monsters keep eating people. Elsa Bloodstone's zeroing in on him with special bullets. Steve Rogers shows up asking Wade to lead the monsters somewhere else so no people get hurt. Because he doesn't care about the monsters.

Didn't I see this argument during Avengers vs. X-Men? And since I've mentioned that, time for the Public Service Announcement: Cyclops was wrong. Thank you.

(Look, someone has to push back against the surprising amount of pro-Cyclops propaganda and misinformation out here on the Internet.)

Also, Kraven (or his son? I dunno, Wade says that, but it sure looks like Original Recipe Kraven) has killed a dozen of Wade's subjects trying to lure him into a fight, but that hasn't worked, so he just attacks him directly. Which, surprisingly, does not end with Kraven being hacked to pieces. No, it's not because Squirrel Girl shows up with an inspiring speech about friendship and second (third, twenty-seventh) chances.

The Captain America cameo felt a little perfunctory, the obligatory Disapproving Authority Figure - I don't even know what his status is these days. Doesn't Tai-Neshi Coates have him as a fugitive right now? - Wade can stand up to and look good. Always fun. It is nice to see that Wade is, to a certain extent, taking the idea of protecting his subjects seriously. He's not doing a good job of it, constantly insulting his knights, letting Kraven kill a dozen people-monsters. But the commercial touting all the good things they have going on isn't a bad idea. He's trying, he's just not succeeding. It's a step up from "trying, but just burns everything to the ground" he normally manages. It's early days, though.

I still really like Wade's crown that he wears at a jaunty angle. Now he's got a scepter, and cape he attaches with an "X" buckle. Man I hope the X-Men don't come by griping about that. They probably will, they're dicks that way. There are some panels where I wonder what Bachalo's going for. The first page has one of the Snowman guy getting ready to eat Jeff the Land Shark, and it took me a minute to realize it was drawn so we were seeing the inside of the snowman's mouth from the side as he drops Jeff in there. It was this moment of, "OK, that's the shark, that's a limb, what the hell is going on here?" Those are few and far between, and Wade looks appropriately messed up under his mask (not in the same way he is on the cover, though).

I do wonder about the amount of white space he leaves on the pages. Almost every page, there's a significant amount that Bachalo is not using at all. I assume he has a reason, but I can't figure out what. If he's wanting to focus in on something specific - and the smaller panels typically are zoomed in - he could still do that, but enlarge the panel, right? Maybe it's about guiding the eye around the page.

What I Bought 11/20/2019 - Part 2

It's nice to find out, every once in a while, that other people's opinions on pop culture stuff can still provoke an indignant reaction in me. The kind where I have to restrain that urge to type something aggressively stupid and confrontational. Not because I want to type that stuff, but it's kinda nice to know I still give enough of a shit to get riled about dumb stuff.

Gwenpool Strikes Back #4, by Leah Williams and Chris Hastings (writers), David Baldeon (artist), Jesus Arbutov (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Don't worry folks, she's just swinging around some fireworks. Wait, that's kind of dangerous.

Gwen, out of any better ideas to beat the Hulk (who is acting more like a mix of childlike classic Hulk and the creepy one Al Ewing is writing, but whatever), decides to recruit other versions of herself from other books she's shone up in. Like that Civil War II tie-in issue of Rocket Raccoon and Groot. While those Gwens keep Hulk occupied by giving him more things to smash, this book's Gwen goes and steals Thor's severed arm from Malekith(?), then wears it over her arm, so she can swipe Mjolnir when Thor chucks it at Kamala (which, overkill there Thor) and hit Hulk in his gamma-irradiated junk with it.

See, when Jeph Loeb did this kind of shit with Red Hulk, it was annoying. Because he played it straight about how this showed how awesome this new character was. Such a big threat. Since Leah Williams is writing as Gwen herself trying to prove she's an awesome character and big deal so she can continue to exist, I can roll with it. Also, it's just so ridiculous that I can laugh at it. In a good way, rather than, "Holy shit, this is terrible writing. Who would pay this person for this?"

Credit to David Baldeon for doing a good impression of the artists from those other books, which also helps to distinguish the Gwens. At least I assume it was a good impression. Other than Unbelievable Gwenpool, I've never read any of the comics these characters are from. But I can confirm he does a good Gurihiru impression! And since that's the best version, that's really all that matters. They're also all different heights, which plays into one gag about Gwen trying to combine with one of the others. Little disappointed she didn't try the Fusion Dance there. That would only work for two Gwens, but you could have three fused Gwens then!

Kind of surprised when Hulk made his "You courted chaos. I'm consenting." line, none of the Gwens had anything to say to that.

Deadpool #1, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciler), Wayne Faucher, Tim Townsend, Al Vey, Jamie Mendoza, Livesay, and Victor Olazaba (inkers), David Curiel (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Holy shit, 6 inkers?! I assume Bachalo is already behind schedule then, and will be on the book for 3 issues, tops.

Wade is alone and depressed, again. Monsters have decided to make themselves a kingdom on Staten Island, and a mysterious guy hires Wade to kill their king. Which he does, with some assistance/interference from Elsa Bloodstone. However, this makes Wade the new king. Which is much less fun than he thought it would be. He can't even get free ice cream! Then Gwen shows up to leave her land shark with him, because she's afraid he'll cease to exist if he's in her book and she gets axed. I thought her land shark was just a backpack. It's alive?! Then Kraven shows up and kills Wade's Lord Chamberlain. Didn't take long for Kraven to revert to type. Again.

Well, I don't see how Wade running a monster kingdom is going to go any better than when he was married to a lady running a monster kingdom. Probably go worse, if Wade's making the policy decisions. But the Blaylock fellow seems like a problem, and Elsa's in contact with someone, and Wade is, as mentioned above, lonely and depressed. Which means he'll do stupid things to try and have some companionship.

Bachalo draws some interesting monsters, although he hardly ever draws the former king's entire body. Which mostly works. What we see of him tends to take up most of whatever panel he's in, which helps to play up his size even in smaller panels. And there are some pages where I'm confused about why they went with the layout they did. The first panel of the page where Wade's arguing with the monster that keeps attacking the ferries, is set at a distance, so that the monster is a bunch of barely differentiated tentacles, and Wade's just a red splotch. I guess to focus the eye on the damaged ferry in the foreground, but considering it's a grey and black object, the eye ends up drawn to Wade or his extremely large voice balloon in the white space next to the panel.

I do really like the crown Bachalo gave him, which looks like Wade stole it from King Koopa. Or King Deedee. Or maybe that evil crocodile guy from Donkey Kong Country. Hmm, I'm starting to think Nintendo might be opposed to monarchies. Either way, Wade wears it at a jaunty angle, and I love it.

Also, we're apparently back to Deadpool not wanting to take his mask off around people. He lifts it to nose level a couple of times, but otherwise, it stays all the way on. He'd gotten more comfortable about it during the Duggan run, or even Cable/Deadpool, but I guess he backslid.

Sunday Splash Page #17

"Seems Like The Same Old Day For Spidey" in Amazing Spider-Man #556, by Zeb Wells (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciler/colorist), Tim Townsend (inker), Antonio Fabela (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Oh boy, Brand New Day. An alien bursting out of the chest of the rotting corpse that was One More Day. With his marriage safely erased from existence, Peter Parker was free to unsuccessfully date several new characters, shuffle through various jobs, and frequently be treated as pretty much a complete loser. As opposed to someone who mostly has his life together, but has just a little too much on his plate, which is how I would have generally described him prior to this.

The first 2.5 years, the book had a core group of creators who took turns on arcs, while it shipped three times a month. Some decent names in there, between Mark Waid, Marcos Martin, Emma Rios, Roger Stern, Joe Kelly, among others. As far as I was concerned, it made it much easier to just pick and choose arcs. I stopped approaching it as "I'm going to buy Spider-Man comics," and turned towards, "I'm going to buy comics about Spider-Man by these specific people."

(My growing awareness about specific creators as a result of being on the Internet reading and writing about comics factored in as well. I was at least developing a group of writers and artist to avoid like the plague, and a smaller subset of people to keep an eye out for).

Dan Slott took over writing duties full-time in the fall of 2010, and is just now relinquishing them. It's been a decade, give or take a month, since the story above came out. In all that time, I bought 22 issues of Amazing Spider-Man, almost all of those prior to July of 2010. Almost all of those were by either Dan Slott & Marcos Martin, Zeb Wells & Chris Bachalo, or Roger Stern & Lee Weeks stories. I still have about a dozen of them. None of the ones I kept really required Peter Parker to be single to function as a story.