What I Bought 2/24/2024 - Part 2

A couple of months late, but I really did want to have the entire mini-series, so let's look at the third issue, after I've already read 4 and 5.

Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial #3, by Louis Southard (writer), Butch Mapa (artist), Sean Peacock (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - Crystals, pendants, daggers and candles. Looking to be one heck of a party.

After he failed attempt to drive Corson away, Sarah tries to get Ortensia ready to get the hell out of town. Ortensia is not inclined to listen, feeling Sarah's been controlling her entire life. Sarah explains what Corson gave her, and what he took, when he approached her centuries ago, but it's unclear if Ortensia fully buys it. I think she does, and she's just frustrated she can't get clear of this life of killing. That's how I'm reading the almost pouting look she gives, combined with her "I think that I hate you, Sarah."

Sarah goes for the horses and meet a posse of the New West's common clay. You know, morons. They aren't much against her, and maybe, after Corson made her feel like a helpless child again, she drags it out longer than necessary. Revels in her power against the outmatched goobers Corson sent to die. Maybe if she just turned them all to stone right off, she could get the horses and ride with Ortensia.

Or maybe not, because Corson steps into the barn, brushes off her attack, and snaps her neck. Notably, Ortensia does reject him before the Plague Doctor shows up and does, whatever lightshow he did to get her out of there. So at least some of what Sarah told Ortensia sunk in, and while unconscious, she sees a vision of herself as she will be. The Woman in Black. Not sure how to interpret that. It isn't how the Plague Doctor would see her, so it doesn't feel like strictly a function of his spell, but if the spell bent time in some way, maybe she glimpsed her future.

Other than Ortensia being wary of Corson even before figuring out he killed Sarah, most of this could be inferred from the subsequent issues. The most interesting bit is at the start of the issue, which is set a few years earlier, highlighting a brief spat between Ortensia and Sarah. It shows Ortensia still thinks of her dead father and her family back East, and that Sarah's not at all sure what she's doing. She actually says "Whew" when Ortensia says that no, she doesn't want to talk about it being her father's birthday. When your response is something I would say, you might be a bad parent.

The part I found really interesting, in light of things we learn in issue 4, is when Sarah tells her she can't wait to see Ortensia grow up and become the person she was always meant to be. That could be taken a lot of ways, but I keep thinking of the revelation that Sarah and the Plague Doctor have known of Ortensia's coming for years, were looking for her, and had their own ideas of what she was going to become.

It also makes one of the last things she tells Ortensia before going for the horses more significant. She tells Ortensia to wait there and, 'think about who you are and what you want.' The font does bold both "you"s, so Sarah really emphasized them. Was it just something she said, to make Ortensia feel like she was getting a choice, or to emphasize the notion Corson wouldn't offer her that option? Or had Sarah's opinion changed in the three years since the flashback, and she was thinking of how to help Ortensia avert becoming what she's "destined" to become?

Based on Ortensia's conversation with the Plague Doctor at the end of the mini-series, she's definitely not of the mind that it's the last option. But she's still angry with a lot of people, so I'm curious if her opinion on things changed by the time of the original mini-series.

What I Bought 1/29/2024 - Part 2

I was driving back from a work thing last week and saw a billboard encouraging people to try camel milk. The billboard assured me it was great for both me and my pets. Yes, that's just what I want, milk from an animal that almost certainly spit it in beforehand.

Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial #5, by Louis Southard (writer), Butch Mapa (artist), Sean Peacock (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - Now that's a look that'll get you morally questionable job offers!

Ortensia returns to the Plague Doctor to find him badly injured, which suits her fine. She's just there for her guns and knife, all of which she unloads on Corson once she gets to his mansion. I especially like her getting him in the eye with a knife while he's in the middle of calling her sweetheart.

Not that any of it does any good. Corson shrugs it all off and pulls the same stunt he did with Sarah in issue 2, creating an illusion of Ortensia as a child with her father. He's about to rip her soul out of her body when the red, multi-armed demon the dopes who killed Ortensia summoned by accident pops up. Ortensia is his (for unclear purposes), and he's Corson's boss, so this meddling is not OK.

It's fun to watch Corson's spectral hellhound form, which has been drawn as fierce and snarling up to this point, suddenly having drooping ears and a cringing stance. It's more fun when Corson's stripped of his powers and Ortensia literally beats him to death, even as Mapa draws her looking increasingly blank as the beating continues. Doesn't bring Sarah back, even if Ortensia is angry at her and the Plague Doctor for just trying to use her to their own ends.

As she points out, the Doc knew what was going to happen to her, and could have intervened. But he didn't, and neither did Sarah. They let Ortensia die, and now she's an angry young woman who may become the Angel of Death, whatever that means, but is certainly not going to care what they had planned for her.

I wasn't sure about a prequel mini-series, because I was less interested in how Ortensia became what she was, and more in what she and Alexander would get involved with as the 19th Century progressed. But this turned out well, seeing an intermediate stage for Ortensia, and I think the interior of the back cover is suggesting the next mini-series will jump back into Ortensia's future, whatever that may hold. Fingers crossed it comes out soon!

What I Bought 1/2/2024 - Part 2

Last two books for 2023, which means I'll start the Year in Review posts on Monday, and run those through Friday. As for the two books, we've got a pair of fourth issues. One is from last week, and the other is from six months ago, but I finally found a copy last week.

Fallen #4, by Matt Ringel (letterer), Henry Ponciano (artist), Toben Racicot (letterer) - Homepathic eye treatment fell out of favor when it was revealed fluorine gas was involved.

So, what did I miss back in the summer? Casper's cop friend shows up wanting answers about a murder victim in a subway. The victim was left with coins over his eyes and a Hades' symbol on his forehead. Which is enough to get Hades involved (big surprise for the cop, learning gods are walking around and his private dick pal is actually immortal), and find out he actually has a little power.

This does lead to a clue as to what's going on, but indirectly. The murder is the work of the guy Hades kept from getting hit by a car in the prior issue, so he's not involved in the god murders. But now Hades has enough power to raise a victim of the drugs and learn Apollo and Loki are behind that problem. Which is kind of irrelevant since the Japanese pantheon's about to kill them, but it catches the characters up to us.

The biggest development here is that Nemesis (rocking the '80s aerobics instructor look like she escaped from a Jane Fonda workout video) shows up to kill Casper as she promised. Instead Casper, in a panicked moment, blows her head off with lightning. At least that's what it looks like, with how her head disappears from its spot atop her impressive trapezius muscle in a burst of green smoke.

I hadn't realized Casper unlocked that move prior to using it for the final showdown in issue 6. It explains his lack of desperation in that scene, if he'd busted it out before, even if the story never explains how it happened that he got Zeus' power, or if he's even considered how.

Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial #4, by Louis Southard (writer), Butch Mapa (artist), Sean Peacock (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - He's got a big beak, and I cannot lie. He can lie, though, I think.

The first 3 pages are set in the distant past, revealing the Plague Doctor was a sorcerer in service of the Pharaoh Khufu, and he foresaw Ortensia's peculiar existence. Back in 1857, Sarah's already dead, which he relates to a very confused Ortensia, not to mention a very surprised me. I thought the witch trial was going to take at least a couple of issues.

The Plague Doctor wants to get them both out of there before Corson arrives, but Ortensia's not inclined to play along. She's even less inclined after the doc gets frustrated and tells Ortensia he made sure Sarah found her, and that Ortensia will be the one who brings ruin up the world for its sins. Complete with big, spooky fog machine special effects!

She stabs him and runs away, which puts lie to the doc's notion he should have raised Ortensia himself, I'd say. Still, when Corson shows up, the doc stares him down and calls him out for really just being pissed Sarah didn't stay broken the way he wanted, and instead tried to be a proper mentor to Ortensia.  I don't think Southard wants us to read it as the harsh words to Ortensia were meant to drive her away to safety, but maybe the Plague Doctor saw things more clearly one he calmed down. A little bleeding does wonders for overwrought humors.

Mapa makes Corson's default expression that wide, toothy smile. Almost like he was cursed with it, to the point it takes effort to make any other expression. In a couple of panels, it looks just an inch away from Corson holding back a scream or crying. Again, not sure that's the intent, it's just how it reads.

Ortensia, meanwhile, has encountered a cheerful masked stranger calling himself the Lone Spirit, who talks in lavender speech balloons. They talk a bit, about her problems, about what the doc told her, and the Spirit's advice is to accept her destiny, but on her terms. It has a feel of Tony Stark telling Banner he owes his life to "the other guy" in the first Avengers movie, but it seems to do the trick. Or it gets Ortensia to stop freaking out long enough to get pissed off.

What I Bought 11/4/2023 - Part 3

I knew the store in town wouldn't have this, but the online store I usually buy from at the end of each month came up empty, too. Had the 4 books we looked at last week, just not this. But with Alex was in the next town over at the end of the previous week, had an excuse to try the store there and viola!

Midnight Western Theatre: Witch Trial #2, by Louis Southard (writer), Butch Mapa (artist), Sean Peacock (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - Damn dapper gents, making the rest of us look bad.

The issue starts with how Sarah first met Corson in 1691, all honeyed words and offers of assistance behind a pleasant smile. In what passes for the present in this story, Sarah is working with the Plague Doctor to figure out where Corson is. The answer, wooing Ortensia with pretty dresses and creepy proclamations a woman will be happier in a specific role. Namely, wearing pretty white dresses like a princess.

Sarah shows up, tells Ortensia to leave, and shoots Corson in the head. Whoo, problem solved, let's get hammered! Or not. Corson's fine, which Ortensia expected. But he's still far too powerful, and as he brags he's going to take Ortensia from Sarah, it's notable Mapa draws Sarah with her mouth erased. That carries over even to the panel where we see them as they were in 1691, when Sarah was the young girl who got duped by Corson. 

I don't know if it's something Corson is actually capable of, or if it's an illusion reinforced by Sarah's feelings of helplessness. Like Corson only has power over her because she thinks he does, but he did an excellent job building that "reality" in her mind when she was younger. Feels like it'll be relevant before this is done, much the same way as the ceremony to bind Horse to Ortensia, even beyond death, will probably be relevant.

So that's where we are. Corson's a demon who disguises that he's shackling a girl within "elevating" her. Putting her on a pedestal, something to sit and look pretty, but never move or speak or think. I'm assuming he chooses women he can sense power inside, and then uses them like a battery. Or maybe it's just for kicks. He wears white, immaculate suits and hats. He talks sweet, puts on manners and offers gifts. All bullshit, but classy bullshit, so people fall for it. Sarah did once, and she's still scarred from it. Ortensia is now, we'll see how that goes.

What I Bought 7/15/2023 - Part 2

Have any of the five of you still using Blogger been notified one of your posts has been hidden because it violated their standards recently? I got that message last month - about a review of Deadpool #25 I did in January of 2017. It didn't say what the violation was, and all I had to do was edit the post and ask for a review to get that removed, but still. This AI, machine learning, algorithm stuff is such a load of horseshit.

Midnight Western Theatre: With Trial #1, by Louis Southard (writer), Butch Mapa (artist), Sean Peacock (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - Feel as though Ortensia might resent being drawn with flowers in her hair.

Southard and Mapa start where Southard and Hahn ended the previous mini-series, more or less. In 1848, Ortensia woke up on a slab in the woods, hair a different color and surrounded by the bodies of the men who killed her and her father. Turns out the morons summoned a different demon than intended and it, for reasons yet unknown, took their lives and gave them to Ortensia. They wanted immortality, but I wonder if that's what she got, or if she simply has to die 4 more times before it sticks.

From there, the story jumps ahead to 1857 (six years before she met Alexander). Ortensia is apprenticing or sidekicking for Sarah, the witch who found her wandering in the forest after the sacrifice. Ortensia hasn't developed her fashion style yet, and Mapa has her far more open with her emotions than Hahn did. Southard also writes her as more of a mouthy teenager compared to the brusque and frequently grouchy woman in the first mini-series.

But it's a different relationship between the leads. Ortensia and Alexander will be partners and friends. Sarah is a teacher and surrogate parent. Sometimes a little smug, like when she casually blows smoke off her finger after saving Ortensia, and sometimes gentle when Ortensia is sad. Sometimes exasperated when Ortensia insists on naming her horse, "Horse". But when those two are interacting, even if Peacock colors the room they're in red, the shadows on them are limited. Their faces are open and visible, whereas there are a lot more shadows when Ortensia's fighting zombies or Sarah's talking with the Plague Doctor.

The two of them handle various paranormal problems like zombies. Although Mapa draws Ortensia with a muzzle-loading rifle that she shoots several times without having to reload. My dad would be so annoyed, assuming the zombie stuff hadn't put him off anyway. They seem to get tips from the Plague Doctor that showed up on one page of the third issue of the previous series, and seems to have his own stuff going on in the background. Real "One-Who-Knows" vibe. Makes excuses for not mentioning important things sooner, that kind of guy.

The specific problem he only now mentioned is a demon that stole Sarah's soul has returned, and he's interested in Ortensia. And he's in the form of a well-dressed man of some local importance, though Sarah doesn't know this and if the Plague Doctor does, he ain't talking. And the demon already found Ortensia, who hasn't been taught not to trust someone who dresses all in white in the Old West. With all the dust and cow shit, they're either complete idiots or messing with dark powers to avoid looking filthy at all times.

So there's likely to be conflict between Ortensia and Sarah, the latter trying to keep the former away from Corson, who will either try to woo Ortensia or convince that he's a monster yes, but one who wants to do better. Could she please help?

What I Bought 10/4/2021 - Part 2

It's David Hahn Day! I mean, I don't think it's his birthday. It could be I guess, but both comics today were drawn by him, so according to the Blog Constitution, that counts.

Midnight Western Theatre #5, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - Alex has got some serious veins on his shins.

The flashback portion shows us that Ortensia woke up after the guys who killed her father tried to sacrifice her. She was not dead, or at least not dead dead, and they were all crispy fried. Then a woman named Sarah, who looks like a rather desiccated Pilgrim found her. And that's all we get on her backstory.

The main part of the issue is her first meeting with Alexander, 15 years later, when she's hired to kill the "Chupacabra" feasting on some ranchers goats. Surprise, it's a very lonely for Revolutionary War soldier turned vampire! Alexander is OK with dying, if he can just have a conversation first. Ortensia reluctantly agrees, he offers his origin as having gotten lost marching in the snow and being found by a peculiar woman. Who then bit him on the neck. He escaped, but now he's a vampire. Who only feeds on animals, mind you.

It's interesting that Hahn gives Alexander vacant white eyes, except in the page where he's feeding on the goats and they're black voids with a red dot in the center. But for the woman who rescued/turned Alexander, Hahn gives her eyes that are entirely black. Is that some signal as to the difference in their status? She's a full vampire, he's not? Or just a representation that she's killed and fed on many people, and Alexander has refrained. One tainted by their choices, the other not.

Long story short, Ortensia feels kinship with someone who was turned into something without a choice, and gives him the opportunity to work for her. Or stay in the cave in what's left of his ragged clothes. And the rest is. . . the first four issues of this mini-series. So far. It feels like Southard left enough space to return to some day. Sarah's an enigma to be sure, and what happened after Ortensia and Alex moved to her property in Oregon is another question. 

Maybe we'll get some more some day. That'd be nice.

Impossible Jones #1, Karl Kesel (writer/inker), David Hahn (penciler), Tony Avina (colorist), Comicraft (letterer) - If you're going to try and stop a thief with a barrier, pick something more sturdy.

Impossible Jones is a hero with stretchy powers, which may or may not come from an other-dimensional alien parasite/symbiote she picked up after being caught in some sort of incident with a quantum generator. Of course, she was caught up in it because she's actually a thief named Belle, who was helping a disgruntled employee of the CEO of a tech company (who is also a super-criminal, possibly with snake powers) rob said company. Belle thinks her crew betrayed her, but at present, the person meddling with the controls of the machine she was trapped in is unknown. Although her buddy Jimmy is definitely acting jumpy.

Even for the comic being 28 pages, Kesel and Hahn fit quite a bit in there. Belle's origin and her crew. We see at least three other costumed heroes and villains each, and here about a couple more. There are all sorts of hints to rivalries and long-running problems, and at least one strange hero legacy, called "Persephone", that seems to be carried by a person for one year, then passed to someone else. 

The hows and the whys are unknown, but I like that Kesel writes it as though this is a universe in progress we've stepped into. The story doesn't stop to explain all the backstory, or this would just be an expository issue. We've got Christmas-themed villainy, betrayals, rivalries, all sorts of stuff going that we hopefully get to tease out as the story goes along.

Kesel's inks soften Hahn's artwork a fair bit. Characters' faces aren't as sharply defined. Ortensia has a jawline that could cut roast, while Belle's is a bit rounder. They have a similar shape to the nose, but Kesel emphasizes different aspects of it than Hahn. Hahn's shadows are heavier, too. thicker and darker than Kesel's.

It fits the characters and their stories, much like Avina and Cody's respective color work does. Impossible Jones is a much brighter book, appropriate for what feels like maybe a Bronze Age super-hero book. Midnight Western Theatre tends to darker colors, but also more solid colors. Less shading. It's Western horror. Even if one of the heroes is a vampire, there's still right and wrong. The ones who hurt, and the ones who help. Belle is a costumed hero sometimes, but she's not above keeping the loot she kept from being stolen for herself. In a bit of a grey area there. Not always bad, not always good.

What I Bought 8/27/2021 - Part 3

Since I'm writing this Tuesday evening, hopefully I got through my two days in the field without incident and am right now enjoying an early start to my weekend. Fingers crossed! Here's two issues of one comic I've been quite enjoying.

Midnight Western Theatre #3 and 4, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - It's funny to me how Andrasofszky's covers make Alexander look alternately dangerous or suave, when he's actually a bit of a goober. Not an unpleasant one, but still kind of a whiny, sheltered young man.

As with the first two issues, 3 and 4 both start in the 1840s, with Ortensia and her father in Oregon. This time, we learn Ortensia's father wasn't nearly the judge of men he claimed, and what that got both of them. Him killed, her used as a virgin sacrifice by some schlubs hoping for immortality. I'm going to assume by her continued unusual existence they didn't get it.

Past that, both issues spend most of their pages in the 1860s. Issue 3 fragments itself a little further by positioning that part of the story as being told by a Native American named Ata'halne to his grandsons in the 1890s. About how he didn't go along with mass relocation of his people, and found a man wearing one of those plague masks who told him, if he hunted down and killed a "skinwalker" that was terrorizing people, he would find his destiny. He does not kill the Yee Naaldlooshi, which looks like a stag on two legs with a wolf's face and its chest cavity open, because he took Ortensia's advice and ran. Which he argues was the intelligent decision, because he's alive to have made a home, and have children and grandchildren. That seeking your destiny is foolish because it will find you. Sounds like an excuse to sit on the couch and eat snacks all day.

The flashback is presented as all full-page splashes with a particular border. I don't think Hahn changes his art style in any substantial way, but the shading is definitely different. In issue 4, a lot of the shading is masses of little black dots, which is not the case for issue 3. And the coloring on the full-page splashes has a certain weathered look to it. Irregular splotches that almost look like water stains. I don't know why that shift in approach at all, I just know I see it.

As for issue 4, most of the action takes place the year after Ortensia and Alexander saved Ata'halne. This time around they're hunting down some misshapen creature that can Hulk out when angry or threatened, and it's not going well. Alexander's had enough, and wants to quit this fighting monsters stuff. Ortensia storms off without him to finish the job, but returns to the town when it's over to find him in the bar. Apparently she's not quite willing to go on alone, and she does still own that land. . .

I think next issue is mostly going to cover how they met, but I'm curious if we'll see how that future goes. Alexander seemed to think Ortensia was searching for something that could actually kill her, but maybe she just needs to let it come to her instead. Building a house doesn't mean they have to stop roaming entirely, or that there won't be any trouble.

The conversation between them is awkward, but in a cute way. Alexander's always nervous around her, but he can't conceal how happy he is she's actually taking his concerns to heart. And Ortensia shifts between being defensively aggressive, leaning forward and jabbing her finger to make absolutely clear about certain points, but Hahn makes sure you can see uncertainty in her eyes when she explains she just wants him to understand. Kinder emotions are harder for her, but she doesn't want Alexander to be disappointed in what she's offering. Alexander seems to be assured enough not to let it phase him. Willing to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Even when she's insisting it's her land, not their land, he just lets it roll off and defuses it.

What I Bought 7/6/2021 - Part 3

For today, we've got a pair of second issues. Two issue #2s. One I enjoyed, one not so much. So kind of a good head, bad head thing. This post is starting to feel like a Two-Face crime. Hopefully Batman doesn't come smashing through my sliding door to break my face. I don't think that's covered by renter's insurance.

Yuki vs. Panda #2, by Graham Misiurak (writer), A.L. Jones (artist/letterer) - Meteorologists say the "looming panda" storm front will be with us for a while, bringing high temperatures and extended stupidity.

The first half of the issue is to introduce us to Yuki's friends, Madesin and Bernard. "Madesin"? Really? And her father's a pastor. Why would a pastor put the word "sin" in his daughter's name? Especially when it requires such an idiotic spelling? OK, OK, deep breath breath Calvin, focus on other things. Madesin, yeesh, may be in love with Yuki, or she just may be an enthusiastic best friend. Bernard is the sarcastic, delusional one, who is apparently building himself a sexbot? A little frightened to see how that Chekov's Gun is going to go off. Yuki finally arrives carrying a huge backpack as training. Which her grandfather was hiding inside, so he could pop out and take a photo of them being surprised.

If he's that bored, you'd think he'd spend more time with online dating.

The other half of the issue is focused on the panda, who spends it monologing about everything he's gone through over the years searching for the child who bit his ear. This includes working in a call center and raking some trailer trash lady's lawn without her permission. He also gets fired from his job at the hot dog cart because he's so lost in thought he lets them get robbed. Except then he stops the thief as they run off. But he also burns his hot dog cart hat and attacks everybody, so maybe he's not cut out for customer service. And all that takes place in the same town Yuki lives, not that he knows that.

Not to sound like Ian Malcolm, but I was expecting more of Yuki fighting the panda in a book called Yuki vs. Panda. I know, I know, table-setting, character introduction, mood establishment. And the contrast between the two leads is sort of interesting. Yuki clearly never thinks about that day, though it's unclear if she ever thinks about anything at all. She admits she's stopped wondering why her grandfather is training her like this, or to what purpose. She's drifting mentally through life, while being pushed towards an unclear goal. Her expressions are most often dismay or confusion, and the weight of the crap her grandfather puts her through is literally pushing her down.

The panda, fixated on a particular humiliation, drifts physically through life. He has a clear goal, but no notion of how to achieve it. Jones draws the panda as walking through the world with his head down, wide straw hat pulled low. A sort of perpetual gloom or fog surrounds him outside brief moments of peace that are shattered by the next panel. But the world around him is bright and sunny. People are happy and laughing, but all he sees is his own misery. 

And all of that is me talking out of my ass like I was Ace Ventura.

Midnight Western Theatre #2, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - A skeleton horse certainly looks cool, but I imagine it's difficult to find a saddle that fits comfortably.

The issue opens with a brief scene from Ortensia's childhood, when her father has a disagreement with some men working for him, but tells her to learn how to read people, and that he knows a good man when he sees one. Given how Ortensia ended up, I'm going to guess he's not as good at it as he thinks.

17 years later, Ortensia and Alexander show up at a disturbing church in the middle of nowhere, looking for a missing girl. The preacher invites them in to be saved, although they'll be crucified if they refuse. So they go in, and descend into a crypt full of idiots in robes. Always encouraging, at least, it is if you're looking to re-enact any number of parts of Resident Evil 4. The loonies worship Samual, which is a red-eyed Doberman. Who just seems to bark mindlessly until Ortensia reaches for her gun. At which point it manages to say "BULLET!" So she obliges, and gives it a bullet. Cue the fight scene.

17 minutes later, everyone's dead save Ortensia, Alexander, and the head priest. Who is very happy, because they've sent everyone on to their god. He asks they do the same for him, and she basically tells him to suffer and die slow. But the girl they were after refused to join, so they'll be bringing back a corpse. Mission accomplished?

The best bit in all this is when Alexander initially refuses to go inside because he's convinced going inside a church is bad for a vampire. Which he thinks he was told by someone in Jersey in 1789. His relief when learns Ortensia is right and that's not true, replaced in the next panel by childish annoyance that he's been afraid of churches for three-quarters of a century for nothing was pretty funny. Although, this feels like a Satanist church, so I'm not sure that's the best judge of whether he could go inside, you know a Baptist church or a synagogue or whatever.

Ortensia is a little gentler with Alexander than she was in the first issue. Not a lot, but she reassures him that he can go inside the church, and that she wouldn't lie to him. It's a bit of a softer moment for her, not quite saying she wants him there to have her back, but implying it. Otherwise, Hahn draws her with a fairly neutral expression until there's violence to be done. A distinct contrast from Alexander's increasingly nervous look as they're surrounded and told to kneel. She's trying to follow her father's suggestion. Watch the people she's dealing with, and having judged the kind of people they are, wait for the proper moment to act.

I'm really enjoying these done-in-one stories, and Southard is sprinkling in other things that I assume are going to build to something by the end. For example, that both Alexander and Ortensia have died previously. Not a surprise with the vampire, and maybe not for her, either, given the skeleton horse, but I'm definitely curious.

What I Bought 3/17/2021 - Part 1

Between the relatively few books I'm getting, and it being a five-Wednesday March, it's been, not feast or famine, more moderately-filling snack and famine? But there were three comics this week, and I even managed to get all three. So let's look at the two first issues I picked up.

Black Knight #1, by Si Spurrier (writer), Sergio Davila (penciler), Sean Parsons (inker), Arif Prianto (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer) - Huh, the little wings on his gloves actually project out from them.

Spurrier's big retcon to Dane Whitman and the Ebony Blade during King in Black was that it isn't the blade that taints Dane, it's that the blade actually is powered by all the ugly emotions inside the person wielding it. If you're too nice or good or whatever, you won't be able to draw on its full power, and possibly can't even pick it up. Thor, for example, can't pull it out of the ground at one point in this issue, which, I dunno. Thor's been pretty full of violence and ego over the centuries. He's no Boy Scout.

Dane is trying to decide what to do about this. Can he be a hero, if he's only useful when he embraces the Dark Side? Is spending time worrying about this of any use? The Avengers are presented as barely tolerating him (I mean, Captain America refers to him as their 'W.M.D.', which is just bizarre when Thor and Carol Danvers are standing right there). He's contacted some history student to try and help him dig into the history of the blade, but thinks maybe that's pointless, too.

Then he gets his head cut off. It's not a permanent thing, though.

 

I feel like Spurrier's going too far afield with the character, but the only two times I've really read much of Dane Whitman were the Stern/Buscema Avengers, and that '90s Heroes for Hire series Ostrander wrote. So it's been a while. And I guess being leader of the Avengers during one of their least fondly remembered eras could do things to a person's self-confidence.

I don't really like Dane having the cape with the fur-lining trim. Looks like it would be heavy and in the way. But hell, he's already wearing a suit of armor, how much more weighed down can he get? The changes to the armor when he lets himself go are kind of cool. More jagged, more points and spikes. He's going to use his trauma in an entirely unhealthy way, and the armor's going to reflect that by becoming more aggressive looking.

Other than that, I like that when we see Dane's bedroom, he's seemingly taken a swipe at every item in there with the sword at some point. Walls, doors, couches. Also there's a mannequin that's either Sir Percy of Scandia or Forbush man holding a broom against one wall. No slashes in it, interestingly enough.

Midnight Western Theatre #1, by Louis Southard (writer), David Hahn (artist), Ryan Cody (colorist), Buddy Beaudoin (letterer) - It would seem, if you're sunlight sensitive enough to need an umbrella, that you should keep your giant bat wings in the shadows.

A gang led by a goon named Red Tom kills everyone in town, children included. The bartender gets to live, though. Then in walk the pair on the cover, although the guy is significantly less imposing since he's whining about being thirsty and how they always do what she wants to do. Tom ultimately shoots the guy (Alexander) in the head. Then the lady (Ortensia), stabs him in the hand and lights the bar on fire. Not because he shot Alex - who is fine, if annoyed - but because of all the other murdering. Alex gets his drink, Red Tom gets shot, and they're on their way.

Southard doesn't waste much time getting down to it. The first two pages are set 20 years earlier, Ortensia somewhere out west with her father, and then it's onto cold-blooded children murdering (off-panel, for the record). And by the end of the issue, the threat of Mad Tom's gang is dealt with, but we get the opportunity to see a bit of Alexander and Ortensia's personalities and relationship, which raises plenty of questions. Why are they traveling together? What's Alex' need to get to the coast? Where'd Ortensia get that horse? What's the significance of the white owl that watched the kids get killed (assuming there is one)?

But I like the two main characters well enough. They play off each other, and I want to learn more about them, so that has to be considered a plus.

 

It's funny how much less dangerous Alexander looks inside the comic versus the cover. Even when Hahn draws him with his wings out near the end of the issue, most of the time he's unimpressive. A little short than Red Tom, skinny and kind of socially awkward. The way Beaudoin letters his dialogue makes it seem like he talks in a constant whisper (although the font size, combined with the white letters against a black speech bubble is kinda hard to read.) He's like either a sheltered child, or an absent-minded museum director. The sort of guy who gets punched in the face, and loudly wonders why you punched him in the face.

Now Ortensia looks fairly cool either way. The bowler hat (or is it too short for a bowler? A derby?), the vest, the white streak in the hair, a couple of facial scares. Hahn makes those more prominent than Andrasofszky does on the cover, but then Hahn makes the white stripes on her pants much narrower than they are on the cover. I think I prefer the light and dark being equivalent, but it might be more symbolic that there's only a bit of white here and there.

The next issue's supposed to be out in June, according to the back of this comic. Hopefully the solicits for June back that up when I get to actually see them.