Sunday Splash Page #220

 

"Casual Arrival," in Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #2, by Jim Mahfood

After Work Sucks, there wasn't another Grrl Scouts mini-series for 14 years. Grrl Scouts: Magic Socks is, unfortunately, my least favorite of the four stories, so it didn't maintain its place in my collection. I don't care about extended Hunter S. Thompson riffs, and Mahfood was in some kind of transition period with his art, and I didn't like the results.

By late 2021-early 2022's Stone Ghost, however, he'd settled into a style I liked a lot better. His work is this strange mix of the characters tending to be fairly simple designs, while the backgrounds and surroundings are a wild mix of details. Dio's (the one in the lower left) face is usually a basic circle with a couple of smaller circles for eyes, two dots for nostrils, some basic shape for a mouth. Her pal Gordi is like a cartoon jellyfish with a derby hat. Mistress Tako is a blood-red cloak with white slits for eyes and mouth surrounded by shadows.

At the same time, the backgrounds are littered with weird stuff. Wires or smoke or random bullets just hovering there. Swirling monstrosities in a void when any notion of distinct panels seems to have been thrown out entirely. It actually makes me a bit nostalgic, because it reminds me of when I would just draw random shit all over my folders in school. Tanks, cubes, lightning bolts, ninja turtle weapons, Velociraptor pupils. Other times, it makes me think of graffiti or wall mural art. Big and wild and just trying to express something.

This is the first mini-series that doesn't take place in Freak City or involve Daphne, Gwen and Rita. In fact, it doesn't even take place on Earth. It revolves around Dio's quest to retrieve her boyfriend's ashes, which he hocked to a loan shark to protect Dio from the debt he'd racked up. Unfortunately, Dio is tied to an ancient lineage and so there are forces out to stop her. Dio initially hires a bodyguard named Turtleneck Jones, but he's soon replaced by his partner of sorts, the cyborg Natas. Where Jones is a gruff, mulleted hardass type, Natas is a big, goofy killing machine who regards the whole thing as a fun adventure are distracts people by asking if they're interested in subscriptions to Cereal Aficionado Magazine.

I can't tell why exactly Mahfood makes the particular choices he does, but I like the sense that he's just going with whatever he feels works at the moment. It fits with the surrealist feel of the story, where anything can happen at any moment. A cyborg can emerge from someone's skull. A guy with a kettle for a head can be taken seriously as a threat. Jumping into someone's dreams is entirely viable. A young couple unites because one makes a ceramic codpiece for the other.

What holds it together is that the story remains focused on Dio and her love for Billy. That's what drives her forward in spite of everything, and it's the relatable core of trying to process losing someone important that gives the story just enough grounding to not feel weightless among all the weird shit. Every issue has a flashback to some part of Dio and Billy's relationship, all of which Mahfood draws as a bunch of little panels done on pages of a yellow legal pad. Like a story someone might doodle during an especially dull meeting. It gives the reader a sense of the relationship the two had, that Billy was goofy and silly, and more than a little self-destructive, while Dio was the more tentative, responsible one. This whole thing is Dio embracing her the bolder, more confrontational part of herself. The part that helped her meet him in the first place, which helps her to move forward.

Sunday Splash Page #219

 

"Quality Customer Service," in Grrl Scouts: Work Sucks #2, by Jim Mahfood

Set sometime after the events of the first mini-series, 2003's Work Sucks finds the Grrls a little too well-known around Freak City, a condition that can be dangerous for drug-dealers. So Gwen decrees the three of them are going legit. Unfortunately, as selling medical cannabis won't be an option for several years yet, that means finding other jobs.

Of the four Grrl Scouts stories, this is the most down-to-earth. No demons, no vast conspiracies, no magic socks or slipping into someone's dreams. There's still violence, there's still absurdity and the girls being irritated by morons, just in everyday settings. The kind of stupidity and aggravation that comes with dealing with people who don't know a damn thing and are determined to make that your problem. The most bizarre thing is Daphne (who ends up working as a bartender) having to keep one-half of the evening's entertainment from being killed the by other half when he accepts their offer of cocaine and doesn't realize it wasn't free.

Mahfood brings each character to something they enjoy the same way (offer from a friend), but not strictly the same path. Rita turns something she was doing in her spare time (tagging), into a regular paying gig working on murals for the city. Daphne doesn't get far looking for work, but demonstrates she knows how things work at the bar and gets offered a job. Gwen's the only one who really goes out hunting for work, and runs into the ever-delightful insistence on "experience". She finds a job working with kids while drowning her sorrows over getting fired.

Mahfood's art is starting to shift a little. He goes to a thinner line almost exclusively, and uses the shadows around the eyes to convey a haunted or irritated look a lot. He's also starting to simplify his expressions and figures. I don't know if that's a time-saving maneuver or just honing his style. His panel layouts are evolving, too. A lot of panels with borders that flow like waves, or that overlap at tense moments or are tipped at an angle. Switches to panels running across two pages and then back to a standard page seemingly whenever he feels like it. He's still a long way from the almost mosaic-like pages in Stone Ghost, but you can see him starting in that direction.

Sunday Splash Page #218

 

"Must be a British Knights fan," in Grrl Scouts #4, bu Jim Mahfood (writer/artist), Sean Konot (letterer)

Released in 1999 through Oni Press, Grrl Scouts was Mahfood's first mini-series starring the trio of weed-dealing, ass-kicking women that make up the cast, Rita, Daphne and Gwen.

Mahfood starts with their day-to-day life of dealing drugs, partying, and beating the crap out of anyone who gives them any static. Very quickly, Mahfood pits them against a mysterious cabal called the Brotherhood of the Cracker, whose membership includes a high-ranking Catholic Church official and Phillip Nykee, major shoe company CEO. The grrls are soon on the run, before teaming up with Rita's not-seen-in-years father for an all-out attack on the Nykee Corporation. Much killing of anonymous men in dark suits follows.

Prior to this, Mahfood had drawn a couple of comics set in Kevin Smith's Clerks universe, and this shares a certain tone with that. The casual drug use (and humor around it), the frequent use of profanity (and the humor around it), the periodic rants by characters which really feel like the author airing grievances (in this case, about Saturday morning cartoons being replaced by live-action teen-oriented shit like Saved by the Bell). If you include Dogma, we could add the ancient conspiracy element and the presence of the supernatural, since Nykee appears to be more than human.

Which is fine by me, I generally enjoy ranting, cursing, and at least sometimes, watching other people get high. It does date the book a bit, makes it feel of a particular era. How much of an issue that is probably depends on the individual.

Mahfood tends towards straightforward page layouts, other than he occasionally has rows of panels run across two pages instead of just one. He's really fond of drawing people pointing guns directly at the reader for some reason, so that we're looking right down the barrel, or like it's coming off the page. I would think that was meant to be unsettling and possibly make the reader consider the violence in the book, but the characters themselves are pretty cavalier about killing people, so maybe not. Maybe he just did it because he could.

He varies the thickness of his linework effectively, messes with perspective and the level of detail as needed. A character's eyes can be extremely detailed from the make-up, eyelashes and bags under the eyes, or they can just be little round circles, depending on what seems to work. Daphne is usually the one exaggerated most, typically for comic effect. It helps get across her more erratic personality. Mahfood also tends to drench the adults (either Nykee and his guys or Rita's father and his guys) in shadows. Half their face obscured, sometimes against a featureless black background. The Grrls rarely get that treatment. Despite everything they get up to, they remain cleanly visible throughout.

Next week, the Grrl Scouts try to go straight.

What I Bought 4/20/2022 - Part 2

There were several Marvel comics I was expecting out this month that don't appear to be showing up. Weird. At least two of them were mini-series I was considering dropping, so maybe I should take it as a sign. The universe is trying to save me from bad decisions. On the other hand, why would it start doing that now?

Grrl Scouts #6, by Jim Mahfood - A girl, her squid buddy, an eel thing, and a bunch of bones.

Dio, Gordi and Turtleneck Jones reach the place where Billy's ashes are stored. After Dio answers a riddle about death and life from two weird yellow things, they still have to blow up the gate to get in. Kettlehead shows up to ruin the plan with some fancy new powers and save dozens of longboxes of '90s comics, but Natas, or at least his head, pulls a suicide bomber routine to make sure those comics get the fate they deserve.

Once inside, Dio has one last legal pad flashback to when she designed the ceramic urn the ashes are stored in. It also shows how she tried to deny he was dying, but Billy had long since accepted how things were going to end. We see conversations they have, as well as some with other people, where Billy just casually discusses how he's gonna be dead soon and Dio tries to act like he's joking.

Back outside, Turtleneck Jones has killed most of Kettlehead's Multi-Form clones, but the real deal's got him on the ropes. It looks like we're about to see what happens when Natas and Jones are dead at the same time, when Dio rushes in and clocks Kettlehead upside the kettle with the urn. Shattering it and thereby scattering his ashes. Jones handles the rest, and Dio has a brief breakdown. 

It's sad, and a little sweet. Right after the panel I selected, Mahfood switches to this almost watercolor style, where Dio's cheeks have this rosy color like he dropped one dilute bit of red paint and let it spread on the paper. It's another of those touches I haven't seen Mahfood use prior to this. It gives the sequence, which is around six panels, a unique look.

Dio's spent the whole series remembering Billy, and their last times together, but this whole bit where she uses him to save Jones' life is the first time where it seems like she acts in a way Billy might have. To charge in without thinking and do something crazy, and then revel in how cool it was. Given the butterfly symbolism, it's like she came out of a cocoon of grief and now she's able to move forward. Not only is she wanting to go find the Grrl Scouts and get trained by them, she wants to help Gordi rescue his family, too. She's embraced taking chances and acting, even if there's a big risk.

I don't know when Mahfood will get back to another of these series, but when he does, I'm curious if he'll focus on the rescue or the visit to Freak City. Or maybe both.

What I Bought 3/23/2022 - Part 2

It's Monday, which is bad, but the weather's nice, which is good. And there are comics to discuss, which is, well, context-dependent, but it's good in this case. Also, Alex and I are going to try and hit a small comic con this weekend, if plans hold.

Batgirls #4, by Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad (writers), Jorge Corona (artist), Sarah Stern (colorist), Becca Carey (letterer) - My God, it's full of Batgirls. Eh, could be worse.

So the whole thing with Nightwing being taken prisoner from the end of last issue was just a hoax by Seer. That kind of gets a casually tossed in resolution at the start. But Oracle is sure she fixed her firewall this time, so it's time to track down the Tutor with the tracking bug they slipped on him last time. The tracking bug he found, so he's ready for them and Steph falls under control again, and starts attacking Cass. Who uses Steph to knock out all Tutor's other followers until Steph can snap out of it. Tutor is captured and taken to Barbara's old friend the psychotherapist we met last issue. Who is Spellbinder. Whoops. Never trust a guy with the last name "Dante".

I'm unclear why the Magistrates, who spot the Batgirls as soon as they head out across the rooftops towards the Tutor, do not attack. I guess the more accurate question is why Seer doesn't let them. She was perfectly OK with them attacking in issue 2. I thought maybe she has a plan for Tutor, and was going to let the Batgirls catch him, then take him away, but again, the Magistrates let Steph and Cass drive off (and where the hell did their car come from if they went by rooftops to get there?) with him.

This is a book where the smaller characters bits are working for me, but the larger plot is falling flat. The first third of this issue is Cass and Steph taking the day for themselves, before that night's mission. So Cloonan and Conrad have them interact with Mr. Dhaliwal (whose cookpot Cass returned last issue), who owns a bookstore, and continue with Steph's half-assed investigating into whether Mr. Greene, the sour-faced old man is this "Hill Ripper" person. They also meet Dante on the street and both of them can tell something's off.

The whole thing kind of plays into their characters, and Corona's selectively loose, exaggerated, expressive fits there. Cass is reserved, and Corona draws her in mostly draw clothes that don't have much loose fabric. She keeps her arms and legs in close, any free hand seems to be a fist, and she can be really intense. Steph, in contrast, is all over the place. Bright clothes, really baggy jeans, arms and legs flailing about. Much more energetic, much less controlled. 

Corona's art is better suited for this than the fights, where his tendency to not always ink himself very strongly means Stern's colors overwhelm his lines and details get lost. Plus, while he gives them large capes, he doesn't really do anything with them stylistically. Nothing like a Breyfogle or Jones using the capes to make them seem larger than life, or like living shadows or anything. The capes are just long pieces of fabric that seem to be in the way.

Also, it would be nice if Stephanie actually got to do something useful. So far, Cloonan and Conrad aren't doing much to disprove Stephanie's fears that she's a liability to the team. At the bare minimum, she should be more competent at following a suspect and trying to gather evidence than stumbling out of bushes and crashing into passerbys.

This book is on a real tightrope with me, and I'm not sure how much more time it's got.

Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #5, by Jim Mahfood - I feel like this should be painted on the side of a panel van. Or maybe a fighter jet?

Dio is Kettlehead's prisoner, and as he had a bag experience with love, he's not going to let her retrieve her lover's ashes before hauling her off to Mistress Tako. Fortunately, Gordi and Becsu finally caught up, and Becsu jumps in, cutting goons to pieces with the power of her sword and the extremely large butt Mahfood gives her. Finally the guy with only one eye gets tired of all his buddies getting chopped to pieces and decides to just try and kill Dio with a poisoned blade. Becsu jumps in the way (that, with Mahfood going to black-and-white for those panels, feels a little like he's aping Frank Miller), but that leaves no one to protect Dio.

Except Turtleneck Jones, who's back from the dead and shoots the guy in the head. Kettlehead decides he's had enough and makes a rocket shoes escape. Becsu's dying words are to ask Dio to travel to Earth and meet the Grrl Scouts so she can be trained for. . .whatever her mission is. But it looks like they're still going to retrieve Billy's ashes first. I'm guessing that'll be the last issue. 

Which is good. This book is all over the place with weird shit, to the point I was debating describing it as "dream logic", but I think the thing that holds it together is that Dio is always trying to find Billy's ashes. Even when Natas seems to be dead (he starts putting himself back together at the end of the issue) and she's a prisoner, she's still asking if they could please go retrieve Billy's ashes before she's hauled off to her likely painful death.

That devotion to loved ones is recurring thing for the whole story. Gordi betrayed Dio out of love for his family, and agreed to help Becsu save Dio out of friendship. Becsu is, I think, protecting Dio at least partially because of the importance of Chouko to her and her tribe. Heck, even Matty, the one-eyed guy, hit his limit because his friend got killed. At that moment, the money no longer mattered, only his dead friend. There might be something similar between Turtleneck Jones and Natas, but I'm not clear enough on their whole deal to be sure.

It's interesting to watch the shifts in color across each issue. This one starts out with a lot of blue on most of the characters, with the backgrounds being a sort of off-white/cream color thing, all through the early stages of Becsu's fight with Kettlehead's guys. Then there's another of the "legal pad" pages of Dio and Billy's relationship, a two-page spread of Tako and the Teeth talking. That's mostly black-and-white, minus Tako's faded bloodstain cloak and Teeth's red speech bubbles. Then two pages of Turtleneck Jones escaping the cops that are mostly black and green backgrounds, with orange for the characters. After that, Mahfood goes back to the fight and yellow and orange dominate everything else. The speech balloons, the characters, any little lines used for emphasis on action.

I don't have any idea why Mahfood switches it around like that. It's just neat to watch.

Oh, and the panels from this issue are from the brief back-up story, where Gordi and his son find a polybagged '90s issue of Macho Tailfin, which cracked me up with such lines as, 'We'll be in and out faster than a crackhead sells his 8-ball jacket for his next hit of rock.'

What I Bought 2/28/2022 - Part 3

Yeah, that weekend trip with Alex was something. Large crowds of drunk people, me spending more money than I intended, threats of gun violence, talking one of his friends out of trying to walk 250 miles back home, at night, in sub-freezing temperatures, because he was in an extraordinarily bad headspace at the time.

Ben Reilly: Spider-Man #2, by J.M. DeMatteis (writer), David Baldeon (artist), Israel Silva (colorist), Joe Carmagna (letterer) - Ben employing his Strategically Torn Spider-Costume here, Tom.

Ben's fight against the Scorpion is related in flashback, as he tells Dr. Kafka about it. He didn't win the fight, and already seems to be questioning if returning to New York, becoming Spider-Man again, was a good idea. Those doubts aren't aided by the fact Mac Gargan apparently never left his cell. What's Gargan doing in Ravencroft, anyway? He strikes me as a guy who goes to regular prison, at least before he spent time with the symbiont.

After, Ben resolves to let go of the attachments to his old life as Peter, since he can't get that back. Sure, just that easy, but Ben decides it's time to make friends. He invites Kafka's assistant Edward Whelan (aka Vermin) to see a couple old sci-fi movies, and when he runs into a regular from the coffee shop, invites him to hang out. Although John seems a little odd. No time to reflect on that, the lady Doctor Octopus shows up to attack Edward! Meanwhile, someone's still taking people out on dates and disposing of them somehow.

Ben's being pretty cavalier with the secret identity. If Kafka already knew thanks to Peter, that's one thing, but Ben's known Edward for about five minutes, and he occasionally mutates into a cannibalistic rat-man. Could probably draw conclusions from that. Ben has nothing and no one to protect. No aunt or wife. If "Ben Reilly" is no longer a viable identity, he can just ditch it, come up with a new one and move on.

I feel like Baldeon zooms in on characters when there's some sort of connection forming between them and Ben. When Ben first visits Edward to apologize for things he said in the first issue, we view them from more of a middle distance, where both characters fit into the panel, and not just their faces, but part of their body as well. But once they hit the movies, and especially when Ben encourages John to come with them,the views seem to close in more. Really focus on faces and reactions. 

But there's also more than a few panels like that during the Scorpion fight. But I figure that thread is connected to the disappearances, and the one responsible is trying to get a grasp on Ben. has already got some sort of mental link that let them know he's Spider-Man.

Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #4, by Jim Mahfood - Shouldn't Natas be more concerned about his severed finger? Maybe he's got a penlight or a laser in there, like Inspector Gadget.

Dio and Natas descend into Mr. Chazee's dreams. Dio insists that since they know where they are, they can do things Chazee can't. Which doesn't keep them from being separated. While Natas uses the power of imagination to mimic early '90s Image comics, Dio figures out the Billy she meets isn't the real deal and banishes him. Unfortunately, she reveals the power in her in the process, marking herself as a descendant of the Grrl Scout line. Fortunately, this gets Chazee to exposit about the importance of all that. As Natas says, ultra-convenient and also informative. They also learn where Billy's ashes are, but wake up to find a bunch of people waiting for them, the leader immediately tearing Natas' head off.

This book has such a bizarre energy to it. I don't really know what Mahfood's going to pull out next, and I enjoy the heck out of it. Natas and his silly comments and excitement about basically everything are a great counterpoint to Dio, who simultaneously understands more of what's going on, but is less ready to handle it. I don't know what's going to happen from here. Will decapitation prove ineffective against Natas? Will Turtleneck Jones re-emerge, or will Dio's power save her? Or is she going to get captured? Gordi and the Amazonian lady are still on their way, a rescue could be their contribution. Especially if they have to confront The Teeth, who has Gordi's family.

I notice the good characters - Dio, Natas, Gordi - tend to be drawn with smoother lines and rounded features. Chazee, Tako, Kettlehead and all his goons are drawn with a lot more sharp edges. Pointed noises, sharp teeth, hair that sticks straight up. Things like that. Also, Mahfood busts out this purple hue for the first manifestation of Dio's power. I'm pretty sure that, among all the different colors he's used through four issues, that color has never come up before. He saved it for a big moment when it could really pop.

What I Bought 1/25/2022

I don't know why February seems to be the worst winter month these days. We had that nasty, two-week stretch with the single digit temps and the ice and whatnot last year, and the month kicked off this year with a delightful little snowpocalypse.

Amazing Spider-Man #87, by Zeb Wells (writer), Carlos Gomez (artist), Bryan Valenza (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I wonder how they decided who got to hold which parts of Peter's costume. I assume Cap took the pants because Felicia wouldn't agree to maybe give them back under any circumstances.

The cover and the solicits I found online say Jed Mackay is the writer, but the first page says Zeb Wells, so I went with that. Anyway, it's the first issue of Amazing Spider-Man I've bought in over 8 years! Well, sheer luck suggested they'd produce something that interested me at some point. 

Peter, having nearly died from being seriously irradiated in a fight with the U-Foes, is chomping at the bit to get back out there. Mary Jane and Felicia are not letting that happen until he can show he's ready. This is a training montage issue of Peter getting generally humiliated trying to keep up with Black Cat and Captain America, but not giving up. The variety of outfits they make him wear since he isn't allowed to wear the Spider-Man costume are sort of amusing. Felicia and her guys literally robbing a place and telling Spidey and Cap to catch them was funny. Can't see Captain America letting her get away with that.

The other plot thread is the Beyond Corporation's mucking around with Ben Reilly's memories to make him a better corporate symbol superhero is having a cascade effect in his brain. He can't remember the most important thing about power and responsibility anymore! And Gomez does this page of panels that zoom in on Ben's pupil, which looks very fragmented around the edges. I feel like something's going to come out of his pupil? Like he's a doorway to somewhere, but given my track record on predictions, probably not.

I don't really see them looking at Peter with disappointment like he describes at one point in the last bit of the montage. I guess that could just be Peter projecting his own frustration with himself. Seems weird to be so down on himself on what I'm guessing is Day 6 of his training, if this was supposed to be such a close call for him. You know, as opposed to the 47,000 other times Spider-Man has been near death, or actually died.

Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #3, by Jim Mahfood - Those are some interesting proportions on that lady, to be sure.

Dio has a strange dream about a butterfly and her importance to the Grrl Scouts, which she knows nothing about, so that's awkward. Natas can't help her make any sense of it, so she explains how Billy gambled away his own remains in one of those two-page sequences that looks like it's done on a legal pad. Gordi, on the other hand, seems to know something about the butterfly at least, though he's not saying. But he and the Azarians are heading out to help Dio, while Mistress Tako sends out more people to hunt down Dio and Natas. Tako also gets cussed out by Gordi's wife, who looks like a reasonably normal (by the standards of Mahfood's art) human being. 

It does seem like Tako's goons are having doubts, if only about their odds of surviving with the increasingly weird stuff going on. Although Kettlehead is determined to kill Natas himself, for killing all Kettlehead's friends, and Binglesworth, who was a bit of a dickhead, but still. Group solidarity is touching, if ultimately going to get this guy killed.

Billy's ashes have wound up in the hands of some ugly guy in a poorly fitting suit whose hair looks as though it was done in crayon. Actually his whole face looks a bit like a clown's, as you can see in the provided panels. Ha, for once I included images which are relevant to the aspect of the art I'm discussing. The issue ends with Dio and Natas initiating the dream jump to figure out where Billy's ashes actually are.

I'm still very curious to see what happens with Natas when Turtleneck Jones resurrects after three days. Especially if Natas is wandering around inside some guy's dream. I don't have too much else to say. This issue has that feel of trying to get the characters in place for the next big thing. Bit of a breather issue, maybe. So we'll see if things get hectic in issue 4. I feel like there's going to be a time loop at some point, where Dio is somehow key to the Grrl Scouts' origin, even though she's in the future. Or this is set in the past.

What I Bought 1/20/2022 - Part 1

3 weeks has actually produced a decent number of comics to review. 8 altogether, which doesn't count the third issue of The Rush, which I wasn't able to find. And anywhere from 3 to 6 more coming out this week. I can't tell if Diamond's got their website crap sorted to where I can trust what's listed under New Releases. It's weird, having so many comics after the recent lean years.

Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #2, by Jim Mahfood - The photo image of the actual human hand on the cover is odd. Reminds me of the collage I had to do for the last art class I took, a long time ago.

Turtleneck Jones shooting himself in the head releases some cheerful robot named Natas, who kills almost all the guys threatening Dio with a pair of guns named "Chucky" and "Bride of Chucky." Mahfood does the gunfight in black and white, before bringing the colors back in the next scene. Oh, and shooting himself in the head also killed Turtleneck Jones, but he'll be back in three days. Just like Jesus! Natas and Dio meet a little chickenbot who gives her a map to dream jump to the place she needs to recover what she needs of Billy, then self-destructs. The chickenbot also claims the person Dio was supposed to meet was a spy, but they can trust him. Sure, seems legit.

In other news, Gordi didn't die, thanks to Becsu of the Azarian Tribe, which is sister to the Grrl Scouts Army. And Mistress Tako's still trying to help the Teeth escape the place where it's trapped. Dio also gives us another glimpse of her and Billy, this time how they started dating. It involves a clay dick, dream jumps, and wet t-shirts. I started laughing as I finished that sentence. 

This comic is just bizarre. Mahfood's all over the damn place with the story. The color schemes he use vary from one scene to the next. Gordi and Becsu are a similar shade of blue-green set against black and yellow backdrops. Natas and Dio's scenes use more sky-blue contrasted against white. Tako and the Teeth are in black and white, except for Tako's red cloak, and those pages are just filled with swirling lines and circles and weird floating eyes. It's kind of like a Ditko Doctor Strange image, except there's more emphasis on it being wild and less on clarity. I don't think this is a comic that's necessarily big on clarity, though.

Lunar Room #2, by Danny Lore (writer), Gio Sposito (artist), DJ Chavis (colorist), Andworld (letterer) - I guess if you can't change into a werewolf, a big honking sword is a decent consolation prize.

OK, the sword Zero stole a piece of was forged long ago during a special alignment. The blacksmith was then killed by shadowy robed types, under the usual horseshit about it being powerful and for everyone's own good. Anyway, the sword actually unlocks access to the "lunar room", and if he can get there, he becomes the most powerful mage alive. Easily able to break the curse. If he lives long enough, which could be dicey. His brother's already tracked down Cynthia, although he only sent humans to fight her, which didn't end well for those dopes. And her old partner Angie, along with Angie's new partner, heard about Cynthia being able to transform (while shaking down people for protection money, essentially), and new guy spilled to their boss. Just not soon enough, so she burned him alive. 

Lovely people. This is going to be one of those stories where everyone sucks, isn't it? This Gloria's a crime boss, and clearly the short-tempered, violent sort. Angie's clearly willing to murder or intimidate people who pay up, just for a little muttering. Cynthia used to work with her, so she probably was the same. Zach's brother seems like a jerk, from the brief glimpses we got of him, and Zero doesn't seem like a good choice for, 'the most powerful mage alive,' as he put it. I don't know why. He just seems untrustworthy. Maybe because he doesn't have much on his side, so he's playing sneaky to give himself a chance.

Hard to know who to root for here. I figure Lore will eventually reveal why Cynthia was "bound" by Gloria, and it'll probably be something like refusing to disembowel the child of someone who couldn't pay up. Which, better than her going along with that, certainly. And we might find out Zero was always the unloved child, the Zuko to his brother's Azula, and that's left him struggling for any self-respect. At this point we don't really know enough about either of them to say. Cynthia's grumpy and impatient, Zero's not great with people.

What I Bought 11/29/2021 - Part 2

We've had really nice weather the last three days. Highs in the 70s in December is probably something I should be concerned about as a portent of climate issues, but oh well.

Tales from the Astronaut #1, by Jonathan Thompson (writer), Jorge Luis Gabotto (artist) - Zoinks! Astronaut skeleton!

The astronaut's corpse acts as essentially a Cryptkeeper, introducing us to each of the short stories. The first is about a group of people that live within a grove of trees which drift from world to world, seeking something. They live, die, and are reborn within the grove. Second story is a press conference for an alien musician, complete with a staged freakout for media attention. Who keeps insisting they're a solo act, despite there being someone with a guitar sitting right next to them. The third story is about a man who buys a steel factory and encourages his son to find a new use for it. The kid builds a war suit.

They aren't horror stories, unless the idea of a parent's best intentions for a child having unexpected outcomes is particularly terrifying. Wouldn't call the stories uplifting, either. Just kind of about the different things people do. Persist, against the odds. Wreck something perfectly good out of short-sighted ego.

Gabotto has a style that straddles the line between detailed and busy. He's very good at drawing wrinkles, warts, jowls, things like that. Sometimes it's easy enough to pick up the details. Sometimes it kind of becomes a mess and I can't tell exactly what I'm looking at on the character's face. He mostly favors solid colors, with shading that looks like watercolor effect. It's light enough the lines show through, so that helps. I think sometimes the panels are just a bit too small for what he's trying to include.

Ultimately, the one problem I may have is I'm more interested in the astronaut than the stories he's telling. How he ended up drifting through space, what he's going to encounter. His situation changes over the course of the issue, so they might go into detail on that, but it's obviously not the focus.

Grrl Scouts: Stone Ghost #1, by Jim Mahfood - Is it him, the little guy in the hat? Is he the stone ghost?

Dio (the girl on the cover) wants to find her deceased lover's ashes. Gordi (the little floaty guy) is her friend and gave her some guidance. She's also hired a large fellow named Turtleneck Jones as a bodyguard of sorts. Which is good, because Gordi sold her out to save him family from the Teeth, whatever that is. The Teeth wants the magic socks that were the MacGuffin in the third Grrl Scouts mini-series, which I thought got returned to the aliens that brought the, but maybe this isn't Earth they're on. Anyway, Dio and Turtleneck are confronted, things look bad, and Turtleneck shoots himself in the head, which no one is happy about.

I picked up the first three Grrl Scouts mini-series over the last few months, and I was a little concerned about the shift in art style between Work Sucks and Magic Socks. Shouldn't really be surprised Mahfood's art changed in a nearly 15-year span, but I didn't really dig the more fluid, looser look. It made me think of someone making art on the side of a building. But it works better here. I don't know if he's gotten better at it, or I'm more accepting because it's a new group of characters. I don't have a preconceived notion of how Dio or Gordi are supposed to look. 

I think part of the issue with Magic Socks was the coloring was still somewhat realistic, and so it clashed with the art. This time around, Mahfood's going strictly for mood. Stark black skies, buildings and cityscapes out of strictly separated blues and yellows. It lends an air of unreality to things, so when a character's design gets really simplified for a single panel reaction to something, be it terror or shock, it doesn't seem out of place. There's even a two-page stretch where Dio explains what happened to her lover, and it's done like a series of tiny panels scrawled out on notebook. I don't really know why Mahfood went with that approach, but the basic black lines on flat yellow paper look makes it sharply different from everything else in the comic.