Saturday Splash Page #60

 

"Legion of Sorta Super-Pals," in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (vol. 2) #49, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

Erica Henderson departed as regular artist after 31 issues (though she continued to be the primary cover artist, and drew parts of a few issues after that), and Derek Charm took over for the remainder of the run. Charm's style was much smoother, in some respects less detailed than Henderson's, but also clearer at times as well. Renzi's colors occasionally overwhelmed Henderson's linework, making things appear muddied, rushed, or half-finished. That wasn't an issue with Charm, but he also didn't vary characters' clothes, hair or general appearance as much as Henderson. Doreen went back to the conventional furry jacket costume look at stayed with it. Nancy basically stuck to one hairstyle.

One theme that North seems to turn to more over these final 18 issues is the fact that Doreen keeps befriending super-villains, and the possible consequences of that. The first story Charm draws involves her inviting Kraven the Hunter on a friend outing to an escape room. Doreen had dissuaded him first from hunting Spider-Man, then from hunting innocent creatures at all (Kraven became a "hunter of hunters"), and seemed to consider the matter settled. Then she's confronted with all the stuff he did - like killing Spider-Man - before she ever met him, and the fact Spider-Man might not be all that convinced Kraven's changed.

Later on, there's a Skrull refugee that first impersonates Squirrel Girl and appears to die (as part of a plan to convince the Skrulls she herself is dead and they don't need to come looking), then kidnaps Tony Stark when the plan goes sideways. Once he's rescued, Stark is understandably reluctant to believe the Skrull girl's claims that she just wants to live peacefully on Earth. Well, kidnapping and attacking a person's friends will have that effect.

The book seems to default to the notion that people can change, so you should therefore keep giving them opportunities. The final story arc is about an enemy Doreen hadn't convinced to change gathering an entire team of villains, outing Squirrel Girl's secret identity, destroying her apartment, hurting her friends, and Doreen still insists Galactus not just eat all the villains when he makes a last-second save. Because if they're dead, they can't change. This seems to sidestep the question of how many people you're going to give them the chance to hurt while you're giving them chances to change, but perhaps too heavy of a subject matter for the intended audience.

It isn't all questions of the human capacity for change and discussions of mercy. There's an all-silent issue about the over-zealous ghost of a librarian, plus an issue where Kang fights the Squirrel Girls of three different eras, each drawn by different artists (Naomi Franquiz for Old Lady Squirrel Girl, Charm for Present Day Squirrel Girl, and Henderson for Awkward Neophyte Squirrel Girl). Plus, the book gets it's one and only official tie-in to an event!

Sure, it's a tie-in to War of the Realms (the event so lame Malekith is the main bad guy), but it involves Squirrel Girl teaming up with Ratatoskr, the trickster Norse squirrel, to liberate Canada from frost giants. There's Ultron as a tree, rudimentary whale speak, and the line, "Food has backfired, somehow!" It's a good time all around, even if you care not a bit about the event itself.

Saturday Splash Page #59

 

"Awwww-kward," in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (vol. 2) #9, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (penciler), Tom Fowler (inker), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)

As you would expect from a company that impersonates a headless chicken as often as Marvel does, many of the ongoing series canceled due to Secret Wars restarted before it was finished, and most of the books paid absolutely no attention to Hickman's event. Including this one!

Outside of Doreen now being a second-year computer science major and having Avengers' privileges, North and Henderson largely continue as they were before the first volume got canceled. Doreen alternates between spending time with her friends and fighting various criminals. The fighting does sometimes involve punching, but just as often involves computer science, helping the antagonist to see a different solution, or just generally talking things out.

So College Age Squirrel Girl can team-up with a version of herself that survived in a timeline that Dr. Doom ruled for decades, but ultimately win by communicating a plan with Nancy by using C++ computer language, since Doom only knows the computer he designed himself. Or Doreen can get Mole Man to stop trying to pressure her to date him by helping him see someone who's loved him all along. Or they defeat a guy who takes over the world with his power to split into limitless numbers of himself, which can combine into a gigantic version of himself, by applying Galileo's Square-Cube Law.

It's a rich and varied tapestry of problem-solving, is what I'm saying.

Henderson's still very good at getting cross the humor that North writes in, mostly by being excellent with body language. My favorite is probably the dating montage from the issue before this, where every date ends with Doreen kicking a can as she walks down the street. Every idiot potential suitor ends with the same frustration.

She also varies Squirrel Girl's look a bit. The costume above is the standard for Henderson's run as artist, but she also introduces a "flying squirrel" suit design which I thought looked pretty neat. Not many heroes can pull of a superhero costume with brown as the main color, but Squirrel Girl can't be defeated even by traditional standards of color theory! There's also a Savage Land, jungle outfit suit for when she has to contend with DINOSAUR ULTRON.

(I really wanted a splash page of DINOSAUR ULTRON, but the few there were didn't really provide the full effect. There was almost a double-page splash, but it had a bunch of tiny panels across the bottom of the page. So close.)

Most of the stories run two to four issues, but North and Henderson mix in the occasional one-shot, such as a Choose Your Own Adventure against the Swarm, or an issue about Taskmaster written from Nancy's cat's perspective. In addition to giving Nancy, Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi from the first volume some more page space and fleshing out, they also added Brain Drain a human brain placed in a robot body by remorseful aliens, who is delightfully poetic about his nihilism, and Mary, another computer science student who might end up becoming a super-villain one of these days. Or maybe not!

Saturday Splash Page #58

 

"Technical Knockout," in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (vol. 1) #4, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer)

In 2015, Marvel gave Ryan North and Erica Henderson the chance to take Squirrel Girl and go nuts.

Audience: Boooooooooo! Boooooooooo!

Shut it, you. Up to that point, Squirrel Girl had mostly been relegated to hanging out with the Great Lakes Avengers, usually written by Dan Slott or Fabian Nicieza. Spinning off the fact she bailed out Iron Man's butt by saving him from Dr. Doom in her first appearance, they started a trend of her defeating big name villains - Thanos, MODOK - when no other heroes were around to see.

So North ran with that, hence "unbeatable." Where most artists since Ditko had drawn Squirrel Girl with a version of the bog standard superheroine body (who may happen to have buck teeth), Henderson gave Doreen a little more bulk in the legs and lower body and a much rounder face. Who happened to have buck teeth and a tail (when she isn't pulling a Warren Worthington and hiding it under her clothes.)

The creative team made Doreen a freshman just starting college as a way to give her a non-superhero supporting cast (although two of the friends she makes turn out to also be animal-themed superheroes) They also made her a computer science major, which North uses to introduce ideas about computers or databases into the stories. Sometimes as immediately relevant, sometimes as an analogy for whatever problem the cast is facing.

My eyes tend to glaze over at some of it, but it's educational (and expositional!) and it made Unbeatable Squirrel Girl a much denser read than most of the comics Marvel or DC were putting out. Especially when added to the fact Doreen often tried to solve problems by talking first, switching to kicking butts only if that fails.

North writes a lot of gags into the stories. Some of them are dialogue-based, in a dry, sort of meta sense. Squirrel Girl expressing surprise Galactus can understand Tippy-Toe's squirrel language and Galactus responding by listing off all the different abilities one who wields the Power Cosmic may possess, ending with, 'So obviously talking to squirrels is really not that big a deal.'

Henderson also gets a lot of chances to draw humor, whether that's Doreen abruptly realizing Ordinary Girl Doreen Girl shouldn't be able to carry a dozen big cardboard boxes herself and just dropping them on the ground, or Doreen and Tippy testing whether each species sees Galactus differently by tossing Tippy way up in the air. So if you ever wanted to see Galactus as a squirrel, issue #4 is the one for you.

Besides the difficulties of starting college and adjusting to her new roommate Nancy Whitehead (and her cat, Mew), and keeping Galactus from eating the Earth, she meets two new superheroes, and then teams up with Thor and the Odinson to stop an evil Asgardian squirrel that's causing trouble on Earth (because Loki's a dick). That story gives us Jane Foster Thor trying to get people to stop fighting over waffles vs. pancakes, only to have one guy pop up yelling his French toast kicks all their butts. It also gives us Loki turning his head into Nancy's fanfic character, Cat Thor. So, again, if that was a thing you needed to see, Erica Henderson had you covered.

And then, after 8 issues, the book got canceled because of Hickman's Secret Wars. Reed and the Illuminati weren't smart enough to ask for Squirrel Girl to deal with their stupid Incursion problem, apparently. Big surprise.

Sunday Splash Page #255

 

"She's Nutty for Him," in I 💓 Marvel Romance #1, by Fabian Nicieza (writer), Paco Medina (penciler), Juan Vlasco (inker), A. Street (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Believe me, I feel as dirty and foul for using an emoji as you think I should, but the title really does include a heart as opposed to the word "heart". This was one of a series of these Marvel released in 2006, this one with the subtitle "Masked Intentions". It's the only one I own, and I bought it up a couple of years ago out of curiosity.

There's two stories, each somewhat related to New Warriors. The other story, by Nicieza and Mike Norton, marks the end of Justice and Firestar's relationship, which had been going since the first year of the original New Warriors volume. Vance figures out Angelica's not as keen on getting married as he is (although he phrases it stupidly, declaring that he's being "the woman" because he's having to pick the invitations, the flowers, and her dress). They agree to put the wedding off, and I don't think they ever pick things up again.

As for this story, set some time after GLA: Misassembled, it establishes Squirrel Girl has a crush on Speedball, which gets referenced a few more times, like in the Deadpool/Great Lakes Initiative Summer Spectacular. Here, though, Doreen's on the Great Lakes X-Men, and Speedball's doing a public appearance in Madison, Wisconsin for the New Warriors reality show, so she goes to meet him. Her attempt to save him from an old foe doesn't go so well. Not because she fails, but the guy's only carrying paintball guns and so the cops feel she went overboard. Still, Speedball tracks her down, reveals he read all the fanmail she sent (and his manager alerted the FBI), and gives her a kiss.

It's bittersweet reading this with the knowledge the trainwreck of Civil War is only a few months away. I doubt this was ever going to go anywhere, but any chance got smothered with the damage Millar did. Speedball gets turned into Penance, and writers spend years digging him out of that hole. Minus his stint in Avengers Academy, Speedball never has gotten to the big-time, while Squirrel Girl had a decently long run as a solo star, which included being on an Avengers team. Admittedly, an Avengers team with Red Hulk, run by Sunspot with AIM funds, but an Avengers squad all the same.

The Runaways Need One Good Team-Up Experience

I'd like to see the Runaways interact with Squirrel Girl. By which I mean Ryan North and Erica Henderson's version of Squirrel Girl. (Not sure if anyone's used her since Unbeatable Squirrel Girl ended. Kind of curious to see how she's characterized when she does eventually appear.)

Partially because the team seems so insistent that adults have always let them down, it would be nice for them to get at least one data point that didn't confirm to that. I mean, technically they already have a couple, because Cloak and Dagger did intend to help them, but got ambushed and mindwiped by the teams' parents. And Spider-Man was fully intent on helping them until Nico barged in and zapped like she frickin' Electro.

(Nico Minoru: Making the wrong decision every time since 2003.)

That aside, Squirrel Girl's unbeatable so she can't let them down. Although, since she was a freshman or sophomore in college for all of North and Henderson's run, she might not qualify as an adult. That would make her no older than Chase or Nico at this point, but they're playing at being adults.

Besides that, I think Molly getting to team-up with Squirrel Girl would be pretty enjoyable. Finally, someone who would encourage all of Molly's flights of fancy! Doreen thoroughly supported Gabby's plans to dress a wolverine up in fancy suits and let him rampage through cardboard cities she constructed, so yeah, I think she and Molly would get along great.

There is the risk that Doreen's boundless optimism would react with Gert's relentless cynicism like matter and anti-matter, devastating all life for miles around. But that would turn out to be part of some grand contest between the embodiment of Positivity and Negativity, where they see how humanity reacts in such an apocalyptic event, to see which of them is more powerful.

I know, cynicism and negativity are not synonymous. It's a first draft, it just needs some (read: a lot) of workshopping. As long as we all agree the ultimate winner will be Brain Drain's bizarrely hopeful nihilism.

What I Bought 11/16/2019

For today, we have yet another one-shot from Marvel (sure hope it's better than all the others I've tried this year), and the final issue of a particular ongoing series. So a little bit of good, and a little bit of sad.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #50, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Erica Henderson (song sequence artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - I have no idea what expression that's supposed to be on Kraven's face. I'm guessing something noble, but it comes off more, vaguely constipated.

After all my guesses as to how Doreen was going to survive the quantum inversion bomb, the answer was, "she's tough enough to not be killed by it". That was a letdown there, really. If it can't kill one person laying directly on top of it, how the hell did Doom expect it to do any good against a whole mess of heroes? It seems like there were so many clever things to do, that was kind of a dud.

Then Galactus shows up, does Power Cosmic stuff to throw the villains in special jail, and has a long conversation with Doreen on the moon about how people change but the things they did don't, so they'll always have this time as friends even if they end up as enemies under another writer later. Which is probably the best way to think about it, since I have no idea how long this version of Squirrel Girl will stick now that this series is over, and who the heck knows with Galactus. I'm pretty sure he went from World Devourer to whatever the hell he was in those Ultimates series post-Secret Wars, and maybe back to Devourer by now.

Then Tony Stark broadcasts a theme song video about Doreen to "properly introduce" her to everyone now that her secret identity is kaput. The main takeaway from it is that at some point, Squirrel Girl punched Mr. Sinister in the face with a coffee mug, which is something the X-Men should have thought to try at some point.

As far as ending go, it's a pretty good one. In keeping with the tone of the series, in that Doreen doesn't let bad circumstances drag her down. Instead she tries to make the best of them. Her secret identity is blown? At least she doesn't have to keep that secret from her friends any longer? Although I'm not sure which friends she had that didn't know her secret identity already.

Black Cat Annual #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Joey Vazquez, Natacha Bustos, Juan Gedeon (artists), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Oh great, Octavius probably rigged that tie with a gizmo that'll let him steal Peter's body again. Creepy bastard.

The story takes place prior to the first issue of the ongoing. Felicia convinces Spidey to help her use the cover of some weird Maggia wedding/combat thing to steal three million dollars from the Maggia. Except she tells Peter it's only two million dollars. One mil to charity, one mil to the two kids who were supposed to fight to the death. One mil for her and her two henchmen.

Each artist handles a different section. Gedeon handles the Dr. Korpse parts, as he infiltrates the a bank to retrieve a particular phone needed to make a call. Although the part I focused on there was his monologue about observing and studying Felicia because she seems the opposite of a criminal mastermind. Which makes me think eventual double-cross.

Bustos handles the sections where Bruno swipes an impounded SHIELD vehicle and picks up the cash, then has to escape when the guys in their weird gold masks realize something is up and try to kill him. Bustos' work reminds me a bit of Steve Lieber's, or maybe Chris Samnee's (with a lot fewer shadows). Reber's coloring on that section might be part of it. I was thinking he was colorist for Lieber on Superior Foes of Spider-Man, but looks like that was Rachelle Rosenberg. Both Gedeon and Bustos mix in a lot of small panels focused on a specific act. Dr. Korpse snipping the wire on a bomb protecting the phone, Bruno wiping the transponder from the car he's stealing. Helps a little to break up what are some not terribly exciting parts of the book.

Vazquez draws everything involving Felicia and Spidey, which means he gets to draw a lot of action sequences and banter between the two, and I think does a pretty good job. There's a difference in the way they move, where Spidey's limbs are kind of all over the place, while Felicia seems like she's closer to following specific forms a gymnast might. You look after he after-images in the panel, her limbs are tucked in tightly during the flip. She's making sure of her balance and posture, while Spidey's arms are just wherever. Which makes sense, considering she undoubtedly has training, and doesn't have spider-powers to let her just fling herself around haphazardly. Plus, I like the Dreadnaught being represented at times as this massive shadowy figure with glowing eyes standing behind whatever attack it's using at that moment.

One other thing I notice is Vazquez makes the material of Felicia's outfit look like leather or something else slick and reflective. Which, to be fair, is what a lot of artist have opted for since, probably when Terry Dodson drew her for either Millar's Marvel Knights Spider-Man run or that Kevin Smith mini-series we're better off just forgetting. Travel Foreman tends to not make it reflective or slick, gives it more of a cloth appearance, which is what I think it was meant to be originally.

Costume discussions aside, I enjoyed this a lot. Just really entertaining little caper, and I always like seeing Black Cat and Spider-Man working together on good terms.

Random Back Issue #9 - Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #28

Damn, you'd think I'd randomly land on a comic from before 2000 at some point, but instead they keep getting more recent. But that's OK, and you know why?

Because there's always time on this blog to show the Silver Surfer get punched in his stupid, shiny, mopey, space face. Granting we haven't spent much time on that yet, so maybe I better get started on that. New series of posts for next year: Norrin Radd gets socked in the kisser!

This was the second part of a story where alien squirrels kidnap Nancy and Tippy to try and discover how Earth was saved from Galactus (the answer was that Doreen found Galactus a planet full of nutritious acorns to snack on instead). It turned out the Silver Surfer showed up with an entourage and a bomb, announcing Galactus would eat the squirrel planet if they didn't hand over all their wealth.

Doreen had figured out they're missing, and is trying to figure out where they went and how to find them. Loki is supposed to be "helping", but this is during that five minute stretch where he was Sorcerer Supreme, so he's only succeeded in dragging Doreen into fighting Dormammu. Once they're out of that, he announces he's going across the galaxy with Doreen to find them and creates a spaceship.

Well, less "creates" and more "steals". And Drax is inside the ship, and he doesn't particularly like Loki, but he does get along with Doreen and agrees to help. The trip is brief, and notable mostly for a discussion of whether beanbags qualify as chairs. I keep expecting this to replace the "is a hot dog a sandwich?" discussions online, but it hasn't happened so far.

Once on the planet it turns out the bomb is a fake, as is the "Surfer". Then the real Silver Surfer shows up, having somehow got wind of all this, but Doreen thinks he's the phony, and that causes some problems.

I can't recall how the next issue begins exactly, but I'm betting the talking hood ornament starts in about how humans are always so prone to violence and blah blah blah. At least we don't help a giant purple guy eat inhabited planets! Except for Nova (the Frankie Raye version). But she was an exception!

The rest of the story is a whole bunch of other alien worlds that were duped by these guys showing up to take revenge, with weapons that can actually kill the Surfer, and that causes a lot of problems. I think this was the last multi-issue story arc Erica Henderson drew, as Derek Charm would take over

[Longbox #11, 316th comic. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (vol. 2) #28, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer)]

4 Easy Ways to Avoid Dying Via Quantum Inversion Bomb

So, what do we figure will happen in the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl finale? Issue 49 ended with Doreen appearing to take to the full brunt of Doom's quantum inversion bomb. Considering Doom intended to kill everyone present with it, including Dormamu and Fin Fang Foom, I'm dubious her body could shield everyone, but her tail could be super-tough and good at absorbing radiation. Maybe that's a new squirrel power?

There is the possibility that Ryan North is going for the big twist ending where Squirrel Girl is finally defeated. . . by death. But I can't really see him going that route. So she has to survive, somehow. I have four possible answers.

Solution 1: Loki gets involved. Loki was not one of the reformed villains that showed up to help Doreen, but it's hard for me to believe he's not going to make an appearance. How could he pass up the opportunity to make the big dramatic save? Plus, Melissa blew up Nancy and Doreen's apartment? Who knows how much Cat Thor fanfiction Nancy hadn't gotten around to posting yet? So Loki shows up, does magic to transport the bomb elsewhere, or transport Doreen elsewhere, or shield her, or intercepted her soul on its way to the afterlife. Something.

Solution 2: Melissa steps in. This whole thing is her fault, because she couldn't handle Doreen being around to potentially mess with her ruling the world, so she was dumb enough to team-up with Doom and think she was prepared for his double-crosses. Then when he double-crossed her ahead of schedule, she basically gave up. But Squirrel Girl didn't give up, and that convinced Melissa to command the Iron Man armor she's wearing to encase Squirrel Girl. Which protects her just enough to survive the blast.

Solution 3: Brain Drain. Tomas chucked Brian into the sky to keep him safe and allow Tomas to continue fighting. Brian had not come back down as of the end of the issue. I am not sure what a nihilistic brain in a jar could accomplish, but I feel confident he'll do something. Yeah, that one is really thin, but it feels significant he isn't back yet. Unless North and Charm are going to do a joke about Brain landing in some random spot because the Earth continued to rotate beneath him as he fell.

Solution 4: Something to do with the acorn necklace. The one Nancy gave to Doreen as a gift in the present, but Old Lady Squirrel Girl gave to her 20-something self at the tail end of the battle with Kang. The one where, if Nancy writes a message in hers, will show up in Doreen's somehow because it's from the future. So Nancy, at some point after this battle, after the bomb, writes a note in hers warning Doreen of what's coming and what she'll do. Doreen checks the thing periodically for messages, found that warning, and came up with something. Don't know what. Maybe Tree Ultron helped somehow? Things went as far as they did because the timeline had to reach the point she falls on the bomb, or you get a time paradox. Then Immortus shows up complaining, or the Time Variance Authority, or who the hell knows what, and nobody what's to deal with complainy old men or government bureaucracy.

So that's what I've got. Now watch it be something entirely different from all of those.

What I Bought 10/12/2019 - Part 2

Another week spent mostly out on inspections. Not as much fun two weeks in a row. And this pretty much does it for me having a bunch of posts saved up and ready to go It was a nice six weeks while it lasted. Today we're looking at the other two comics I'm buying from Marvel this month.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #49, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - I really like the colors on that cover. The pink, the green, the purple. It's like a particularly deadly sunset over a septic pond!

The battle between the villains and Doreen's friends goes back and forth, helpfully tracked by the "Chance-Of-Winning-The-Big-Fight-Scene-O-Meter". The squirrels show up to help, Mordo has a spell for that. The Avengers show up, Melissa gives her allies each suits of Tony's armor. Captain Marvel tries an ambush, Doom has nanobots for that. All the villains Doreen's helped over the years show up to lend a hand? Well, Doom has a plan for that, but it's not one anybody else is going to like. Oh Doom, you're such a cad!

That was a lot of fun. I didn't expect the arrival of Kraven and Co. I was pleased to see Melissa have the opportunity to realize how dumb it was to think she actually had a handle on a partnership with Doom. Any partnership with Doom is ultimately reliant on him deciding to honor the terms, because otherwise, he's going to backstab at some point. You can't stop it, you can only hope to survive it.

Charm's nauseous squirrels are adorable, and I laughed at the panel of Fin Fang Foom looking perplexed and angry at all these squirrels crawling all over him. Although they look like brown leeches in that panel. I would be freaked out about that, too. The whole page of Doreen being blasted across the park and almost not being able to get up was really well done. Probably because we haven't seen her fail to get up yet. She's gotten up and realized she needs to try something else plenty of times, but that still involved getting up.

I laughed at the explanation for how the Avengers showed up, even with Melissa blocking Tony's distress call. She-Hulk made a really good point, although I could have seen the argument no media showed up because they've become blase about climactic super-battles. It would have been understandable. Also, Melissa, or whoever it was, trying to blast that poor cameraman.

Black Cat #5, by Jed MacKay (writer), Travel Foreman (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Not sure what exactly we're seeing there. I guess all the potential ways it could end for Felicia. Hence the "9 Lives" thing.

Blastaar has something that keeps the Negative Zone portal from closing, so the building is on lockdown. So Felicia and her guys can't just run. Not that Johnny could beat Blastaar on his own, anyway. So Felicia's got to stay, and Felicia has to fight. All the more since Blastaar's taken a shine to her. Little surprised she'd be his type, but I don't know what the women of his species look like, and it could just be a conqueror mentality. You're mine, like everything is mine. Anyway, with a little help from Trapster's arsenal, and Doc managing to hotwire the Fantasticar, Felicia dumps Blastaar back into the Negative Zone. Then Sue Richards shows up, but she's mostly interested in yelling at Johnny, so Felicia and the guys get to leave, with the book.

So I guess we can add "Black Cat" to the list of people Blastaar has grudges against. I never did get to see him settle things with Star-Lord or Nova after they pissed him off in the Abnett/Lanning days.

While I like how absolutely furious Foreman draws Sue (I can see why she's the one Felicia did not want to mess with), I'm surprised she's that pissed. Yes, Sue, Blastaar forced open the Negative Zone portal and attacked your house. Don't act like this is the first time this kind of thing has happened. Or else tell Reed to get rid of the damn portal.

For all that Felicia is wondering in this issue if she's a bad person, it seems like she was going to do something crazy and possibly self-sacrificing with that device before Sue showed up. She tells Doc and Sonny to get Johnny, and makes sure Bruno can get himself moving, but what was she going to be doing? She's holding the device. Was she going to keep it, and hope her powers kept it from exploding somehow?

Foreman draws Blastaar a lot uglier and crazier than I'm used to seeing him. He's very lumpy, massive neck, from certain angles, looks like his nose barely projects off his face. Heck, from certain angle it looks like his face just grows out of his neck, no skull involved. They do things differently in the Negative Zone.

What I Bought 9/13/2019 - Part 2

It's been 90 degrees here all week. Guess I should get used to that state of affairs, but I would rather complain futilely about it. Where's my autumn? At least the temperature is supposed to moderate this weekend. it's Alex' birthday, so it'd be nice to not feel trapped inside.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #48, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist/trading card artist), Michael Cho and Doc Shanher (trading card artists), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Doom is unimpressed by Squirrel Girl's ability to cradle Iron Man's unconscious body.

The villains all agree to work together until Squirrel Girl is defeated, then it's everyone for themselves. Totally sure none of them will try to jump the gun on that! Doreen advises the villains attacking her at school that this is a bad idea, and they give up. Traveling to what's left of Doreen and Nancy's apartment, they find Mew did not get blown up. Hooray! Then they track Melissa to the park, where she spends the rest of the issue monologuing about how she hired someone to tamper with Iron Man's armor so she can hijack it, and how she let Brain Drain send off that message and blah, blah.

OK, "Iron Ring" is not a great name, but not even Melissa can bat 1.000. It is impressive how much time she's spent maneuvering and preparing for this moment, although I'm not sure we needed roughly 6 pages of her talking about it. Less chat, more splat, lady.

During the scene where the cast is rushing to Doreen and Nancy's apartment, there's one panel where they leap from what I assume is a building that is just below the border of the panel, but between the way that's laid out, and the next panel where they're off in the distance above seemingly empty space, it looks like they jumped off air. Or an invisible building. Maybe it's Melissa's secret lair! I hope they remember to go back and check that out later!

I did enjoy the three panels of Doreen and Nancy gawking at the assembled villains, and then Doreen hands Nancy their respective trading cards so she (and the audience) can all get familiar with these bad guys. Also the fact that on the final page, it looks like Tony is trying to fight Taskmaster by throwing rocks at him. Not a boulder, mind you, just ordinary rocks. While fighting in his Iron Man boxer shorts, which I call bullshit on. Everyone knows Tony Stark would have special-made boxers with his own face on them. Iron Man boxers are for everyone else.

Giant Days #54, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Whitney Cogar (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - I don't remember if I threw my cap in the air at my high school graduation. I didn't attend the ceremony when I got either of my degrees. The fact I didn't have to was something I was very pleased about when my mom told me. Pay a bunch of money for a stupid gown and sit there sweating for hours to get a piece of paper that tells me something I already know? Hell with that.

Esther and Daisy bunk with Susan for the 6 weeks between the end of their classes and receiving their degrees. Esther didn't clear this plan with her parents before having them haul her stuff home, so that's awkward. When they notice the back tattoo she got first year they didn't know about either, that makes things worse. Also, her influence has got Susan thinking about stealing all the diplomas for herself. So many useless degrees! Ed got himself a haircut, and a job at a bank. Poor Ed, bad luck right to the end. Daisy got a job working on historic sites for the city council, but must avoid the tomb of Derek Dooley. Well now I have to know what's in it! There are tearful farewells and that's it, until next month's "One Year Later" one-off

Daisy's whole hypothesis about what could potentially end their friendship came from left field, but I've had some notions like that during conversations before, so I can't talk. I like that Allison touched on the recent passing of McGraw's father (part of the reason there was room for Esther and Daisy was he went home to help his mother for a while). That's not the sort of thing that just resolves itself quickly and neatly, not in the legal sense or the emotional one. Dean Thompson got a one-panel send off from Esther that was all he deserved, but not all that I wanted him to get.

Susan's video-game version of herself is hilarious, and the bizarre, mini-Susan Daisy envisions as a product of an affair between McGraw and Esther is adorable. If you set aside the part where she pictures them giving the child cigarettes. There's no way McGraw would be so irresponsible! There's one panel of Esther's mum freaking out about the tattoo where I love the postures. her mouth is wide open (as are her eyes), and her hands are in her hair, while Esther scrambles to put her dress on, and you can only see one big, embarrassed eyes peering out. It captures the moment so well. I am going to miss Max Sarin's artwork so much.

What I Bought 8/16/2019 - Part 2

Unless problems arise, my dad and I are out tomorrow attending the Cardinals' annual Hall of Fame game. Will they manage to win over the pretty lousy Colorado Rockies? Will Mike Shildt insist on playing utility infielders in the outfield instead of the actual, goddamn outfielders he has on the fucking roster? Will we be unfortunate enough to have to watch Michael Wacha "pitch"? Check back in for answers to these questions and more some time next week!

In the meantime, here's two other Marvel comics from last week.

Black Cat #3, by Jed MacKay (writer), Travel Foreman (artist), Michael Dowling (flashback artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I don't think you should attach a creepy other-dimensional eyeball directly to your skin, Felicia.

Xander got his special stone back and is out of control. Felicia's guys are completely outclassed, and so are all of the magical defenses in Dr. Strange's house. However, since we're apparently defining magic as 'mucking with quantum probabilities through force of will to produce unexpected results', and Felicia has a power - or technological implant? I'm unclear on which it is - that also messes with probabilities, all Xander's spells turn harmless as they reach her. So he gets his lights put out, Felicia and the others escape with the deed to Manhattan (still not sure why Strange would have that), and the ghost dog will have some 'splaining to do.

The whole gag with the ghost dog thinking Felicia is Silver Sable seemed kind of pointless, since I'm pretty sure the snakes know who she is, but the dog being so happy about getting deputized into the Wild Pack was endearing. Foreman has Xander swing between sneeringly arrogant and creepily deranged effectively. MacKay seems to be giving him enough space on the page to tell things clearly, and Foreman and Reber are doing a good job. I especially liked the visual of the giant magic hammer turning into cupcakes right before it landed on Felicia's head. Actually, Felicia gets a few panels in there where she looks a little deranged, and I can't decide if she's trying to for intimidating, or she was simply really excited once she figured out she had an edge against this guy.

I don't know what the Fox is intending for them to steal from Yancy Street, and I feel like Felicia should be a little more concerned that he's playing her, but I'm still intrigued. 

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #47, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Madeline McGrane (trading card artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - They even had Doreen pop the knuckle spike to complete the Wolverine homage.

Everyone is concerned they can't find Brain Drain. Doreen's been getting strange photos of a dark room for a few days, and there's a whole spiel about how Brain has been subtly altering the code of the pixels in the photos as a way to send a message that I didn't follow beyond what I just told you. The message is only that Melissa Morbeck is back, and she's followed up kidnapping by exposing Doreen's secret identity to the world. Then she blows up her house. Then a bunch of low-tier villains attack Doreen and her friends while Melissa makes a sales pitch to a bunch of actual, dangerous villains to team-up and kill Squirrel Girl.

I can't help noticing Boomerang is one of the villains attacking Doreen, despite his sort-of reformed act in Amazing Spider-Man. Of course, North went to the trouble of trying to reform Kraven, and Nick Spencer basically handwaved that as, "Nope, Kraven decided it was too hard and went back to trying to make Spider-Man kill him." I gotta think this is tit-for-tat. I mean, there are hundreds of lame-ass, low-tier villains North could have picked - Stilt-Man's always a good option - but he picked Boomerang. Well, that means a bad day for Fred, since I'm pretty sure Doreen and Co. are not in any mood to put with his crap right now. I mean, the media plastered that picture of Doreen with ice cream on her face all over the airwaves, hasn't she suffered enough?

Apparently not, since I'm posting it here. It does make for a nice contrast. Living the best life, clocking Thanos in his stupid purple face, then scarfing ice cream.

Anyway, there's a lot of talking in this issue, even for this comic. Between the time spent explaining the whole secret code Brain sent them, and then Melissa's big sales pitch. Because super-villain team-ups always work so well. It's laying the ground floor for the big finale, though I don't see how all those villains agree to work together. Also, isn't Taskmaster a little out of his league, hanging out with Dr. Doom and Dormmamu?

What I Bought 7/6/2019 - Part 1

As you might have guessed from the resumption of Sunday Splash Page, I retrieved the remainder of my stuff from my dad's over the weekend. One less thing to take care of off my mind. Otherwise, it was a mostly quiet weekend. Spent the 4th with Alex, per tradition. Helped my dads run errands Saturday before grabbing my stuff. Relaxed the rest of the time.

Magnificent Ms. Marvel Annual #1, by Magdalene Visaggio (writer), Jon Lam (artist), Msassyk (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I'd recommend dodging, Kamala. It's not just the most important "D" in dodgeball, it's also a good way to avoid dying.

Super Skrull is approached by some Kree guy with a device that can draw the shapeshifting energy out of a person, and if they're strong enough, use it to reshape an entire world. Like make Earth into a replica of the old Skrull homeworld. And Kamala just so happens to have enough of that energy.

Rather than fight her directly, Super-Skrull assumes the "Captain Hero" identity from the end of the original Power Man and Iron Fist (although I think Byrne retconned it to being Super-Skrull, it was just some kid originally), and tries to goad her into a fight by. . . fighting crime in Jersey City? But being kind of brutal about it, supposedly? Kamala ignores it, so he eventually busts in on her fighting a criminal, and tries to kill the criminal to get the fight going, then drops his disguise. The device almost kills them both (accidentally), and Kamala convinces Super-Skrull to stop worrying about revenge and focus on moving his people forward.

Wow, that plan makes absolutely no sense. I get the part about not wanting to attract the Fantastic Four's attention by just showing up in his full glory throwing flame blasts around. But if he wants to goad her in, why try to antagonize by taking a contrary approach to crimefighting? Be the sort of hero she'd want to team-up with, then she'll drop her guard. Also, the news report says people are calling him the "new Punisher", but he's not killing anyone, just punching them a little harder than most heroes do. Not that I wanted him to kill Arcade, Batroc, or the White Rabbit, but the action/reaction don't line up.

Lam's art is loose, a little scratchy, but closer to the look of the previous volume of Ms. Marvel, which is fine. Kamala's a gangly teen with expressive eyes. Lam really sells the impact of Super-Skrull's punches because Kamala's body will go flying and her limbs may be stretched out as the lag behind. Captain Hero is closer to the conventional superhero look, though you'd expect a more Nineties design for such an "extreme" hero. But maybe when Kamala talks about that not being how things are done any more, she's referring back to Golden Age comics, when even Batman and Superman killed people?

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #46, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Thor does not appear in this issue. Loki does, at the very end, if you care.

Squirrel Girl's plan to defeat the Frost Giants is to find their food supply and cut it off. After some thinking, they realize the Frost Giants are eating whales, and set about freeing the captive beluga whales. This requires assistance from beluga whales that haven't been captured, which requires Ratatoskr to use that one semester of Whale she took in college to communicate. The whales are freed! Hooray! Now we humans are free to hunt them down and kill them again!

Of course, the Frost Giants are still around, now both hungry and angry, so our duo defeat them with the power of political rhetoric. Works for me, because invading Earth really wasn't a great idea for Frost Giants. Afterward, Loki tries to show up and drag Ratatoskr back to Asgard jail, on the grounds that she tricked him once, so she can't be trusted. I think, by that logic, no person should ever trust Loki, and we should all punch him and throw him in Asgard jail. Anyway, Doreen vouches for "Rachel", and Nancy vouches for Doreen, and that's that.

It was a nice tie-in story. I didn't care about War of the Realms, but this works fine as a Squirrel Girl story where she has to stop a random Frost Giant invasion of her native Canada. The main gist of the story is Doreen first trying to get Ratatoskr to not be so chaotic, and be helpful instead. Then realizing Rachel can use her being a trickster god for good. She doesn't have to change who she is entirely, just use her natural talents in a different direction. Doreen is willing to trust her to do that, and it works.

My two favorite bits in this issue are the Frost Giant that was appointed "ship's captain" in his striped blue-and-white shirt and little cap, and Rachel's attempt to speak whale. Both are shown above for your convenience, along with the wonderful line, "Food has backfired somehow!" Clearly that Frost Giant has never eaten anything really spicy or that he's allergic to.

Although Charm draws Rachel as a narwhal (an adorable narwhal with pointy incisors), not a beluga. Granting the two are fairly closely related as whales go, and the horn(tusk?) was integral to Rachel's plan, are North and Charm implying all whales speak the same language? I find that extremely unrealistic. In this story about a girl with squirrel powers teaming up with a trickster squirrel god to fight Frost Giants for the fate of Canada.

Down the Rabbit, er Squirrel Hole I Go

So last month in Squirrel Girl, Ratatoskr had showed up claiming she wanted to team-up with Squirrel Girl to fight the Frost Giants and Malekith. The chaotic squirrel deity also mentioned that it had been working on a team-up with Melissa Morbeck (the wealthy industrialist lady who came up with devices to control animals), but had abandoned that plan.

We saw that Ratatoskr only became aware of what Malekith was up to after Mangog's attack on Asgard inadvertently freed the squirrel from a prison cell. I'm guessing Ratatoskr wasn't able to contact a mortal on Earth in her prison from an Asgardian cell. Maybe that's a mistake, but I'm assuming years of having to deal with Loki and the Enchantress would have convinced the Asgardians to install something to keep people from calling with potential allies.

Which makes me wonder how long this frickin' War of the Realms has been going in their universe. If Ratatoskr couldn't contact Melissa until after escaping Asgard Jail, and that was 26 issues ago, what is that in Marvel time? 13 months? 6 months?

But if Ratatoskr had to escape first, then by the time she made it to Earth, she would have already observed Malekith was going to make everything about him, which she found unacceptable. Why even bother contacting Melissa at that point? But if she made contact while still imprisoned, why Melissa of all people? It's not like she's going to be able to get you out of there. She couldn't even keep herself out of Earth jail, and she's rich.

Of course, we don't have anyone to corroborate Ratatoskr's story. She may have escaped on her own a long time before the War of the Realms started. She's not supposed to be deceiving Squirrel Girl now, but she told her version of events before making any promises to stay on the up and up. Mostly I'm wondering if Doreen can trust that Ratatoskr has actually abandoned the "Team-up with Melissa to get revenge on Squirrel Girl" plan, or if that's still waiting in the wings for after this war is over.

Usually when Doreen's opponents have a change of heart it sticks. In her book, at least (Kraven reverted to type pretty rapidly once Nick Spencer got hold of him). Melissa was one of the few original foes Doreen failed to sway with her speeches, and I could see Ratatoskr being the one that appears to switch sides, but can't or won't maintain it. I think she'd get bored with it.

What I Bought 6/12/2019

I successfully moved into my new place Friday. Mostly. When we went to get the last of my stuff from what's left of the old place, we found someone had broken in through the kitchen ceiling. Near as I can tell, all they took was the Nintendo 64, since I didn't have room to take it along two weeks ago. I did pack the controllers, cables, and memory cards, but they got the console and the games. Ah well, I got 22 years out of it.

About half of my books, 95% of my comics, and all my games and movies are still at my dad's, along with my bicycle. May be a few weeks before I can get those, so Sunday Splash Page is still on hiatus, contrary to yesterday's entry (one Batgirl trade happened to be in the 5% that randomly got loaded).

But I went back and added scans to all the reviews from the last couple weeks!

Anyway, here's the only book I was after that came out last week, and the last time I checked, there isn't anything I'm interested in coming out this week. Bummer.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #45, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Just tell them you're full of worms and diseases. Sort of worked for Bilbo, right?

Doreen is unhappy with how Ratatoskr handled things in that town, and when she learns the squirrel is really only interested in causing chaos, because she believes the Earth is already doomed, Doreen calls off the team-up. Doreen tromps off into the snow (and we get two pages of her leaning against a tree reading a Robert Frost poem, which felt random). Rachel mind controls some frost giants until she has a personal epiphany that Squirrel Girl was right about her. Then she mind controls one of the frost giants into taking her to find Doreen, so they can team up again. Which they do. They reach the Frost Giant stronghold, do not succeed in finding any useful intel, but Doreen thinks she has a plan, except they get attacked by Frost Giants. Because they're in a Frost Giant stronghold.

My best guess is Doreen wants Rachel to imitate a Frost Giant to sow discord among them and get them fighting, the way her attempt to be "Rachel" didn't exactly go over well with the locals in the last town. Could be, probably am, entirely wrong about that.

I like that the meanest thing Doreen can think of to say to someone is that her life would be better off if she'd never met them. There are a lot of people I would say that to, but for her, that is a damning statement. So that was funny, and so was the Frost Giants not wanting to talk about anything but frost. It's an easy gag, but it's still funny. Especially when they argue over what type of frost is the best and man, rime frost doesn't even count, Daisy what the hell are you thinking, bringing that mess in here?

The visual of Rachel turning her eyes into binoculars was a little disturbing at first. But then I figured it was the kind of thing Plastic Man would do, and it was helping her to see at long distances, so it's fine. The thing she did with her ears a couple pages later was just bizarre, though. Like I said, the bit with Doreen reading/listening to a Robert Frost poem seemed like an unnecessarily roundabout way to get to her saying, 'And miles to go before I sleep,' but Charm and Renzi draw a pleasant couple of pages of Doreen using her tail as a cushion as she leans against a tree and feeds acorns to a doe.

As far as unnecessary tie-ins to an event I'm not reading go, this one isn't bad. It still works perfectly well as a Squirrel Girl story, which is the most important thing.

Squirrels, Samurais, and Shapeshifters

Looking at Ratatoskr in the most recent issue of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, I commented he looked more goofy than menacing, that his weird, bulging eyes reminded me of early Daffy Duck. I can easily picture him going "whoo hoo hoo hoo" and running around crazily.

But there's another character that Ratatoskr's design reminded me of, at least a little. One more sinister than Daffy Duck.

It's probably the flame patterns around the eyes. Aku, the main villain of Samurai Jack. His color scheme is mostly black, with some red and green (plus the whites of his eyes). Ratatoskr has more orange because of that mane, but otherwise, mostly black, with green and orange.

They're both shapeshifters. Aku's never become a squirrel to my knowledge - he usually prefers larger, more dangerous creatures - but he's become gnawing mammals before. Usually when Jack has hacked him down to almost nothing. After this most recent issue of Squirrel Girl, they've both disguised themselves as women to team-up with the hero*.

 I was initially thinking they'd make an interesting villain team-up, but thinking about it, you'd run into the same set of problems that have led to Ratatoskr teaming up with Squirrel Girl. Ratatoskr loves chaos. Aku wants the entire world subservient to him. Not a whole lot different from what Malekith is trying.

But there is a difference. Aku wants everyone to remember who is in charge, to bring him tribute, kiss his butt and so on. But he's not omnipotent, and he's not meddling everywhere. Jack had plenty of adventures that did not involve Aku at all. Demons, aggressive gorilla clans, mechanical cannibals, on and on. There is still a lot of chaos, still struggle, strife, and mayhem all over the world that Aku has no apparent involvement with. Because Aku doesn't perceive it as impacting him from his perch as King of the World.

If Ratatoskr could be convinced that the world would become boring if "the Samurai" succeeds in returning to his own time and destroying Aku, I could see the Squirrel Chaos God getting involved. If nothing else, Ratatoskr might really enjoy messing with Jack. More likely to trick innocent people into attacking Jack, recognizing Jack won't strike back at them. Or maybe just follow Jack around like his version of the Cheshire Cat. Act annoying, place obstacles in his path, but do things that lead Jack to people in danger, or help him to achieve a goal every once in a while. Just enough to confuse him as to what is going on with this strange, giant squirrel (that will not shut the hell up). It's too powerful and clever for him to kill it, maybe he shouldn't even try to kill it. It did help him that one time with *insert particular instance of help*.

Doreen and her friends could eventually arrive to help and/or confuse Jack even more. A relentlessly upbeat girl who talks to squirrels, a talking brain in a jar on a robot body, Koi Boi and his relentless awful fish puns. Although Jack's seen stranger things than a brain in a robot body. Actually, I doubt Jack would react all that much to any of them. He's seen so much since being thrown to the future, this crew wouldn't rank in the top 100 weird things he's encountered. But there could still be problems if they show up and try to fight Ratatoskr when he's in the middle of helping Jack. Things would probably calm down pretty quickly, though. Shortest misunderstanding fight ever.

* Although Aku only did that so Jack would lead him to yet another possible way home for the samurai, so Aku could keep it away from Jack. Doreen should probably watch her back.

What I Bought 5/8/2019 - Part 3

We'll discuss the baseball outing with dad tomorrow. Spoiler alert: the lost. Booo. For now, two Marvel comics. One book's time is up with me, and it is not the one in the middle of a Big Event crossover, remarkably.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #44, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - The store didn't have any with the regular cover, so I wound up with the variant. Which is OK, but I liked the Erica Henderson cover a lot more.

Squirrel Girl and Ratatoskr defeat the two frost giants while Ratatoskr explains why she's willing to work together. Answer being, because Malekith is going to enforce a singular vision - his - over everything, and that's boring to a being that thrives on chaos. Better to help those fighting him. In an attempt to figure out where the main Frost Giant base is, the two visit the town they just saved to try and question the locals. Ratatoskr's attempt to pretend to be a regular human is even worse than Doreen's attempts to protect her secret identity, so things go downhill quickly.

I got a few laughs out of this issue, which is the most you can hope for with event tie-ins. Doreen's cover i.d. being a dowager when she had no idea what that meant, or the backstory "Rachel" made for herself, which Doreen nixed, but I think Rachel used it anyway. Plus, Rachel being confused about various aspects of English. It is a confusing muddle of a language. I didn't realize that Squirrel Girl makes the "Chrrrtt" sound when she whistles. I thought it was a vocalization she used to call squirrels.

I still really like the Arctic Gear alternate costume for Doreen. It's pretty nifty. I need to go back and compare, but I feel like Charm's version of Ratatoskr looks a little more goofy than Henderson's did. Having the big, bulging eyes looking in entirely different directions reminds me of early Daffy Duck, when he was more crazy than angry. Like I'd expect Ratatoskr to plant a wet one on someone then, laughing crazily before running off. Probably necessary softening of the edges so the two can have a team-up. Like when the Punisher agrees to use rubber bullets or whatever.

It took two readthroughs to realize that the first panel on page six is an Action Comics #1 homage, only with Jane Thor hefting Mangog's foot instead of a car, and the Freaking Out Guy commenting on how Mangog won't stop talking about how he has the power of a billion billion beings. Which is true. I think I own two comics that guy is in, and he never shuts up about that.

Still, our heroes are not making much progress towards repelling the invaders. Maybe next issue.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6, by Tom Taylor (writer), Juann Cabal (artist), Nolan Woodward and Federico Blee (color artists), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Not sure why there's Kirby Crackle floating around on the cover, unless Spider-Bite is an imp from the 6th Dimension.

OK, Spider-Bite is not actually a new kid sidekick, or an imp from another dimension that just wants to be pals. Spidey is trying to do a nice thing for a sick kid, and so they set up a kind of play thing where they fight a bunch of Spidey's foes and protect the city from Spider-Man's greatest adversary. I recognized most of the members of the "Sinister Sixty", although there were a couple I have no clue about. There's a guy to the right of the Green Goblin's leg, in some kind of suit with a big emblem on it. The guy with their face in shadow of a purple cloak to the upper left, and the colorless guy to his right. Wait, the guy in the purple is The Swarm. Still no clue who the other two are. Eh, doesn't matter.

It's a nice issue, decent little one-off. The little bits and pieces are still my favorite stuff. Spidey's commentary on the mastermind, or how has one of his action figures, but won't take it out of the box. I agree with that kid, that's a waste. Play with the damn thing, or at least put it someplace you can look at it happily.

The fight scene doesn't look terribly dynamic, but that makes perfect sense once you understand exactly what's happening. There's a bit where the boy doesn't want to take a nap, which he shouts. The next panel is silent, and Cabal draws Spidey in the same position he was in two panels earlier, with his arms crossed over his chest and having a relaxed conversation. Except now the fingers of one hand have come up off the opposite arm. A little thing that suggests he was startled, and everyone is on edge now, because they aren't sure what to do.

It's the issue I enjoyed most so far, but I still don't think I'm sticking with it. We're going back to longer plotlines next month, and those haven't worked so well so far.

What I Bought 4/13/2019 - Part 1

The comics, they just keep coming. Which is good, gives us something to chat about. Otherwise, we might have to discuss the current state of our respective lives and nobody wants that, right? Right. Here's two Marvel comics from last week.

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #5, Tom Taylor (writer), Yildiray Cinar (artist), Nolan Woodward (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - This week, Spider-Man tries to pay the rent by taking Pym Particles and selling himself as a drive-in movie screen.

Aunt May is going in for chemo. Peter handles this by going out to swing around the city and not think about it. He finds a young kid stealing a car to escape his mom's abusive boyfriend, and then helps the kid escape the police (after losing control and breaking the kid's wrist). Takes kid to Dr. Strange for some medical help, gets the picture that Strange will not be helping with May's issue, and makes sure to be waiting for her at the hospital.

I actually really liked this issue. The Aunt May health crisis thing is old hat, but hell, she's been through a lot of shit, she should have all kinds of health issues by now. Her blood pressure is probably ridiculous. And the previous arc made a big deal about the underground city, but I didn't feel like it did much with it to justify it. It felt like it threw in a lot of elements that weren't really necessary. This issue is a little more focused, bad news, Peter trying to work through it by ultimately helping someone else. The story feels like it has only as many elements as it needs.

New artist, Yildiray Cinar. His style is closer to a more conventional superhero look. Peter's face is a little more square-jawed than with Juann Cabal, who drew him with a rounder face. More muscular build also, closer to a John Romita Sr. body type, where as Cabal was somewhere between Ditko's stringbean and Bagley's skinny but cut style. Woodward also toned down the brightness on his colors compared to the first four issues. There weren't any giant lava oceans in this issue, or even any parts where the spider-sense went off to see if Woodward was going to keep using that intense blue, but even Strange's ghost dog was a more muted shade of green. I'm curious whether that was a one-time thing, given the somber tone of the issue, or if that's something that will continue as long as Cinar is artist on the book.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #43, by Ryan North (writer), Derek Charm (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - Thor carrying two hammers still looks silly to me. I guess he is the God of Hammers.

Doreen's visit to the Negative Zone is interrupted by someone teleporting her back to Earth and Loki. Loki tells her the War of the Realms is on and Earth is going to fall. I assume the rest of the universe will be fine. Until Thanos pops up again, but whatever. If Doreen goes to Canada and destroys the Frost Giants' secret base, then maybe the counterattack can begin. Doreen goes to Canada, has some trouble with some Frost Giants, but after some help from special surprise vegetation and a chat with the parents, evil Norse squirrel Ratatoskr shows up with a bone to pick.

Loki insists the heroes don't realize they've already lost. I would argue that, as a former (current?) villain who has often thought he had triumphed, Loki is not the best judge of when the heroes have actually been defeated. How many times has Loki cackled, "Mine accursed brother will ne'er escape this trap!" only for Thor to, you know, escape the trap and cave Loki's head in? A lot, that's how many times.

The winter weather alternate costume is pretty cool, although that looks like a holster on the hip and I can't see Squirrel Girl carrying a firearm. Unless it's some sort of grappling line gun. Could come in handy for dealing with Frost Giants, if you want to do the old snowspeeders on Planet Hoth maneuver. Otherwise I'd expect a lot of belt pouches, full of acorns for squirrel friends, and maybe a handkerchief, or some lip balm. Practical, everyday stuff, spare cellphone or whatever.

The Mini-Series Everyone (Meaning Me) Wants

If Marvel is going to insist on there 12-issue mini-series set in that "Old Man (insert name)" universe, they could at least give us "Unbeatable Old Lady Squirrel Girl". I'd buy that, depending on the creative team. Meaning Ryan North as writer, at minimum. Maybe the Guruhiru team on art. It'll be the brightest, most adorable post-apocalyptic landscape ever! Or, since the end of the most recent issue says they averted that fate, it's just set in a generally pleasant, non-apocalyptic future landscape. Whichever.

It would be odd for an allegedly "unbeatable" hero to be in a post-apocalyptic landscape. If they let the apocalypse happen, not so unbeatable, right (Not counting them landing there from the distant past or an alternate dimension)? Unless it's because of something like climate change instead of super-villains. That's a bit out of Doreen's wheelhouse. It could depend on time scale. If Doreen, Nancy, and the others turn things around in the end, it becomes a matter of losing the battle but winning the war.

As far as the arch-foe, it has to be Doom, doesn't it? Squirrel Girl's first super-villain (excluding Kang's time travel hijinks), trying to settle things with her again at the end. You can throw other problems in there, of course:

 - Loki making his inevitable reversion to villainy (or is he?), probably because he disagreed with a decision Nancy made in her Cat Thor fanfic. Will Nancy consider revising her story in the face of Loki spamming the comment section?

- The Ultron plant they brought back from the Savage Land and placed in Doreen's parents' yard is going through a rough adolescence/evolution. Can Doreen connect with a hip young artificial intelligence teen (that is probably evolved into a squirrel by this point?)

- Kraven's taking the "hunter of hunter" things a bit far, and is stalking bargain-hunters. Spider-Man's on his case again, and everybody is just really grumpy about having to deal with this again. As it turns out, Kraven's not happy about being alive again (I'm assuming he's gonna figure out some way to get killed in that "Hunted" story that's running in Amazing Spider-Man), and trying to get out any which way he can.

- Maybe Mary makes her eventual break towards super-villainy, weaponized Brain Drain's nihilism, and it's infecting the others. Koi Boi can't even bother to make fish puns any more!

And so on, and so forth.

What I Bought 3/16/2019

I played chess with my dad over the weekend. I've actually managed to beat him a few times the last year, which is a nice change from every attempt up to that point. Even though it's never pretty. Usually a matter of which of us makes a mind-boggling screw-up last. This game was an ugly rock fight like that. He screwed up, then I screwed up later and about did myself in, then he made the last mistake and conceded. I'll take it.

Here's two books from last week. One is hitting a milestone (sorta), and the other is the first issue.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #42, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson, Derek Charm, Naomi Franquiz (artists), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - That weird swirl of white near the bottom of the hourglass looks like someone got sloppy with their paintbrush.

Kang tries to kill Old Lady Squirrel Girl, because he learned she was destined to defeat him. His attempt to drop a building on her is unwittingly thwarted by Present Day Squirrel Girl, so he goes back to try and kill her. Except his attempt to blow her up is unwittingly thwarted by Rookie Squirrel Girl (and Monkey Joe!), so Kang tries to go back to kill her, and then ends up fighting all three of them, because Doreen has some eidetic memory shit when it comes to the components of a time travel machine.

I enjoyed this a lot. If you're going to use multiple artists in an issue, this is a good way to do it. Have it make sense why you're switching artists when you do, and have a coherent story. Not one of those jam issues that just barely holds together. I enjoy repeatedly flummoxed Kang, although I find it hard to believe he had never used 'I've got some time to kill' prior to attacking Rookie Squirrel Girl. But I suppose this could have been Kang extremely early in the game for him. He's a time-traveler, it's hard to tell. Even the super-villain trading card was confused, and you'd think Deadpool would have a handle on time travel from hanging out with Cable so much.

Each of the artists has a bit of a different approach to Kang's look. Franquiz has the mask part of his helmet be a lot wider, and gives him a very large grin. I kept thinking Kang's smile reminded of a DBZ villain, but I think it was Cui, which is not a compliment to Kang. Cui was cowardly chump who got killed by Vegeta of all people. Franquiz also drew Kang with an actual neck. Charm and Henderson both draw the helmet as extending all the way to the collarbone.

Henderson gives Kang a lot of hilarious and bizarre scrunchy-face looks. To be fair to Kang, by that point he's getting extremely frustrated by how much effort it's taking to ensure Squirrel Girl doesn't defeat him. Henderson also makes the green portions of his costume a lot baggier than the other two.

Charm makes the face mask part of the helmet smaller than the others, and mostly gives Kang an annoyed scowl. Except for that one panel where's he's smirking and claiming credit for some line J.M. Barrie wrote. I liked the scrambled look he gave Doreen after she got a satellite dropped on her. Franquiz' art is somewhere between Henderson and Charm's. Not nearly as slick and clean looking as Charm's, but not quite as rough and stripped-down as Henderson's. It's easier to feel like her characters and Henderson's are the same, though. Charm's tendency to slim everyone down runs against the other two artists' willingness to draw Doreen as being more round in the face.

Magnificent Ms. Marvel #1, by Saladin Ahmed (writer), Mingkyu Jung (penciler), Juan Vlasco (inker), Ian Herring (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - I kind of like the elongated look there, but you'd think she'd want to go smaller, for less wind resistance.

Kamala's trying to talk more with Nakia about the whole being a superhero thing, but has to get home, where she learns her mother finally told her father about the whole being a superhero thing. I wondered when we'd get to that. Pops tells her no more crimefighting, which Kamala promptly ignores because Bruno's being attacked by a wolfman who turns into goo. Then she fights a birdperson, same result. Then she gets home and both her parents turn into goo. Seems like an extreme approach to try and get your kid to obey you, but what do I know. I'm not a parent.

When Kamala smashes the bird guy, she morphs her fists so they have meat tenderizer like bumps on the end. Which is not a thing I can recall her ever doing. That's more of a Plastic Man thing, or Reed Richards at times. I guess her powers could still be evolving.

I was surprised it was still Ian Herring on the color work. Outside a few close-up panels here and there where he uses that familiar shade of yellow for a solid background, it didn't feel the same. Which is interesting, because Herring always seemed to help keep the previous volumes in a similar tone regardless of which of the many artists he was working with was doing that issue. Things tended to feel bright, but also soft. Gentle colors, which is not the vibe I got her.

Part of that might be deliberate for this particular story. Something is going on in Jersey City, and maybe that's an indication. Or it's just the direction Ahmed and Jung want to go with things. Jung's artwork is closer to what I'd think of a typical superhero comic style than most of the artists Herring and Wilson worked with. Jung doesn't really go the route of simplifying the style for exaggerated effect, doesn't add a bunch of cute or funny background details to give an element of the absurd to the action.

Again, could be a deliberate choice for this particular story. The same way the narration is from someone other than Kamala. Typically we've had her thoughts as she deals with whatever is going on, but since the story is being told by someone else, that isn't the case here. It plays up the difference between how she's perceived and how she is, as opposed to how she perceives things and how they're actually going. The alien telling the story probably wouldn't know about all the stuff that's usually hanging around when she fights villains, or wouldn't consider it relevant, so that's why it isn't in the story.

Which makes me wonder if Deathbringer or the two goo monsters actually looked anything like how we see them. Maybe they were tiny, silly animated stuffed animals, but the alien guy figures they must have been mighty beasts to challenge the great hero.

I guess we'll see what the next issue brings.