A Month of Wednesdays: July 2026

BOUGHT: 

Now That We Draw Vol. 5 (Seven Seas Entertainment) The previous volume ended with a pretty big cliffhanger, with high schooler and aspiring manga artist Uehara Yuu overhearing the other two points of the series' emerging love triangle discussing him in the hot spring next to the one he was soaking in. His cute childhood friend turned sensei (and successful manga artist) Love-chan asks his classmate, crush and manga muse Miyamoto point blank: "How do you feel... ...about Yuu-kun?"

Overcome with emotion, and not wanting to hear her answer, he plunges his head beneath the water. And stays there. For four minutes! 

He needn't have bothered, as her answer was far from conclusive. "I don't know," she said, and then went on to explain that in elementary school, there was a boy that all the girls liked, but her reaction at the time was simply, "What's so great about him? Manga characters are way cooler." That didn't change much as he grew up, and, despite Uehara's virtues, he couldn't be farther away from the "super-sadistic arrogant jerks" of doujinshi that turn her on...although she doesn't share that last bit with Love-chan.

Holding one's breath under hot water for four minutes is, it turns out, not great for one's health, and so Uehara passes out, waking up sometime later with his head on Miyamoto's lap...and with one of her breasts in his face. (When he realizes where he is, he jumps up...but bounces his head off of Miyamoto's big and, apparently, bouncy breast).

Uehara and Miyamoto's research trip with their respective senseis thus comes to an end in the first chapter of this volume, and they return to their normal-ish lives of high school and trying to break into the manga industry. Here, Uehara has the opportunity to get an eight-page fill-in published in a widely-read manga magazine...if he could only find the inspiration to tell a compelling story (Once again, Miyamoto inadvertently acts as his muse, a simple moment between them inspiring such feelings in Uehara that he is able to capture and covey it in a story good enough to make the cut for the magazine.)

As for Miayamoto, she gives herself a practically impossible deadline for an entry into a contests, driving herself to the absolute brink as she tries to make it...and ultimately only does so with the encouragement (and help on backgrounds) of Uehara. 

This volume mostly focuses on the pair of them, with Ren-chan barely appearing, and this volume's plots and reactions revolve around the pair as comics creators, which of course gives the series more punch for those of us interested in the art form and the industry, punch that it would lack if the characters were trying to break into basically any other industry.

It can be a bit difficult for me to remember exactly how some things felt as a teenager, but I am consistently amused by what seems like Uehara's shyness and prudery when teased by often scantily clad Miyamoto (a trait he shares with other manga characters I can think of, like Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro's Hachiouji Naoto). I'm not sure if it's embarrassment or overcorrecting efforts to not appear like a pervert, but he recoils from Miyamoto in sometimes amusing ways. 

There's a particularly over-the-top example here. When he calls her to share an amazing development about his budding manga career, she receives his call as a video call, even though she's in the bath ("Don't worry! I'll only show my face!", she says, and then slowly tilts the phone a bit lower. "Unless... ...was there more you wanted to see?  You know. Like thiiis?🩷")

When he later drops the bombshell about the fill-in, she's so excited she jumps out of the bath, her dialogue balloon and a sound effect covering her nipples, so that she's temporarily exposed to Uehara (But not, of course, the readers).

And how does he react? 

His eyes go wide, his face turns red and he...throws his phone away as if it were a grenade about to go off:

As with the first few volumes, this was a lot of fun and, like the previous volume, it ends with a hell of a dramatic cliffhanger. 

Skip and Loafer Vol. 12 (Seven Seas) A couple months back, the co-worker who had recommended Haikyu!! to me mentioned that she was reading this series and really liked it. I had never picked it up myself before because I disliked the title so much (And, having now read it, I see that title has nothing to do with the content at all; Skip and Loafer is the best comic with the worst title I've ever read). But given how much I ended up liking Haikyu!!, I trusted her tastes and gave the first volume a try. 

It didn't take long to fly through the first ten volumes of the series that our library system had, and, when I saw that volume 11 was still listed as "on order" in the catalog, despite the fact that it was released last September of 2025 (and volume 12 was due in the next month or so!), I bought volume 11. 

So, this twelfth volume is the first one I bought brand new, which is why I'm including it in my monthly "Month of Wednesdays" column. (And this is the precise reason that the manga series on those bookshelves I've been showing you once a week are always so incomplete; in this case, the first volume I bought was the eleventh, so when my nieces and nephews have to deal with my comics collection after my death, they will find the first ten volumes of this series missing.)

If you haven't read Skip and Loafer at all, but are someone who enjoys teen drama, I would highly recommend the series. For a manga that makes it to North American shelves, the premise seems remarkably simple and ordinary: Mitsumi, an ambitious girl from a tiny seaside town, gets accepted into a high school in Tokyo, and must navigate a big, new school full of strangers for the first time in her life.

And that's pretty much it, really. In the first few volumes, manga-ka Misaki Takamatsu introduces us to new characters, and a co-ed friend group quickly coalesces around Mitsumi. The slice-of-life manga mostly concerns itself with fairly typical school stuff: Hangouts, crushes, dates, school festivals, student council, tests, college ambitions and so forth.

The other main character is Sousuke, the shaggy haired blond guy on the cover with Mitsumi. Good-looking and popular, he is the first person Mitsumi meets at in Tokyo, and the two form an almost instant and curiously strong bond. Initially, there doesn't seem to be a romantic component to their relationship at all: He thinks of her as a baby duck in need of his help, while she thinks of him as a big, friendly dog...in large part because his hairstyle reminds him of her family dog back home. 

Their friendship quickly evolves into a sort of attraction or crush, maybe even love, although, by this point, the pair don't seem to have figured out exactly what they mean to one another, nor how a relationship between them might work (This, despite admitting to themselves that they love one another, and even briefly attempting to date and then breaking up when they realized they were happier when they were friends). 

Interestingly, they seem to be soulmates to us readers, but struggle with their feelings and the expression of those feelings. This is, perhaps in large part, due to Sousuke's troubled inner life. He's a former child star who survived a media scandal before giving up professional acting, and he has a strained relationship with his mother. As nice a guy as he is in all respects, he holds almost everyone at arm's length, and doesn't seem to know what he thinks or what he wants. These sequences offer the occasional patch of darkness in an otherwise bight and sunny school romance/comedy.

That it is all so engaging is thanks to the strong characters Takamatsu has created. They are all easy to like and root for; even those that seem to act in negative ways in the early volumes are quickly painted in a more sympathetic light, and we come to see why they acted the way they did. 

Takamatsu also spends a great deal of time on the fact that everyone has problems—even the best-looking, most popular characters find themselves burdened socially by these virtues—and plenty of panel-space with the characters discussing matters of love and relationships that make for interesting meditations (Not as much panel-space as Blue Flag, though, where such conversations can go on for tens of pages at a time). 

More than once I caught myself pondering what the characters were saying about relationships and how it might apply to my own life...only to remember that these are fictional teenagers in a manga series, while I am a real adult man in his forties. 

As for this particular volume, Sosuke and Mitsumi have a kinda sorta date at the end of their class trip, we learn the specifics of the media scandal involving Sosuke and his friend Ririka when they were kids, Mitsumi's family comes to Tokyo to visit and to attend her last second-year school festival and Sosuke plays the monster in a school stage adaptation of Frankenstein and there's an awfully dramatic cliffhanger ending. 

TMNT: Journeys Vol. 1 (IDW Publishing) This is a comic book collection I absolutely did not need to buy. Mirage launched the fourth volume of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles title 2001, reclaiming the book after Image Comics' 1996-1999 stewardship (that was the third volume, of course, which IDW later branded in its collections as Urban Legends) and with co-creator Peter Laird and longtime artist Jim Lawson at the helm. 

I started buying the series and read it for a while back then, but gradually lost track of it within the first ten issues or so. I would later go back and buy most of it—and much of its sister series, the 2004-launched Tales of the TMNT—from Mirage's website, which was then selling a bunch of its backstock. Still, I didn't get all of this volume of the series.

So, I was pretty excited to hear that IDW was getting around to collecting it—adding the Journeys sub-title to distinguish it from their ongoing series, I guess—so that I could finally read the whole thing in order. But, like I said, I didn't need this particular volume, which collects the first five issues of the series, as I know I definitely have those issues in singles. Still, if there are comics I don't mind having multiple versions of, it's Mirage's TMNT comic, and if I was going to avail myself of the future collections in the series, I figured I might as well have the first volume for my shelf, too.

Now, there are a few noteworthy aspects of this particular Turtles series. 

First, it is very much a Mirage book. I knew that Laird had written it and Lawson had drawn it, but I guess I had forgotten the specifics of what each did, and the involvement of other creators. In addition to writing, Laird also inked and toned Lawson's pencils and handled the lettering. Lawson is credited as both penciller and layout artist here (I guess that means he and Laird worked "Marvel method," right?). Eric Talbot took over inking on issues #3-5. And Michael Dooney finished (painted?) the covers, the first issue over Laird's pencil art (note how much the Turtles on this cover look like the "real" Turtles), and then over Lawson's on later issues. And while all of these guys would return to do future Turtles work later—even Laird doing a rare cover here or there—this era was the last time we would see them all doing Turtles work of such significant size and working together.

Second, this isn't any sort of reboot along the lines of IDW's TMNT or a discrete continuity like the old Archie Comics Adventures comics, this is a continuation of the story of the Turtles, from Mirage's first issue in 1984 through the conclusion of volume 2, taking into account the continuity and characters that they met along the way (but ignoring the Image Comics volume, which did follow previous TMNT continuity, but went off in its own weird directions that aren't at all reference here). 

And third, something I don't think I quite appreciated 25 years ago, but the Turtles here have apparently been aging in something close to real time...or, at the very least, a lot closer to real time than the heroes of most long-lived comic books (Actually, doing the math, there might be a bit of a fast-forward involved here, as Casey and April's adopted daughter Shadow, who was a baby 1992-1993's "City At War" storyline is here a teenager). 

That is presumably why this book is entitled TMNT rather than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Although there is a scene in issue #1, echoing the original TMNT #1, where we get a double-page spread of the Turtles retaliating against a street gang who have backed them into a corner, where the words "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" appears along the bottom fourth of the image).

After their first round against this gang (named "The Madhattan Maulitia"), the guys take a breather, and Michelangelo (spelled without the "a" here...for the first time...?) braces himself against a wall and says, "Is it just me... Or was this a lot easier 15 years ago...?). The implication seems to be that this is set 15 years after their first appearance, battling the Purple Dragons...that, or, perhaps, since we last saw them in a Mirage comic, as baby Shadow is now a teenager herself. 

So, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are no longer teenagers, but somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties. 

Long before The Last Ronin, then, Laird began a story about the Turtles as adults, grown-up enough to start dealing with conflicts particular to adulthood that will be unfurled in later issues, but here, at least, we see the guys talking about being uncles to Shadow, and their human friends Casey and April are struggling to have a child of their own. While "Adult Mutant Ninja Turtles" obviously doesn't have the same magical marketing ring to it, that's where we are with the characters in this particular series, and I think that makes it particularly interesting, even special, given that all of the other comics and mass media adaptations have featured the guys as teenagers (In fact, the latest movie, 2023's animated Mutant Mayhem really leaned into the teenage aspect of the characters in a way I don't think any other iterations had previously). 

The first of the 32-page issues establishes the current status quo. The Turtles live in their sewer lair, fighting crime in New York City. Casey and April are together in the city as well, and as mentioned, trying to have a baby. Shadow lives in the North Hampton farmhouse with Splinter, where she trains with her "grandfather"...and friends like Metalhead from the superhero team Justice Force (Introduced in Laird and Lawson's 1988 TMNT #15; several Justice Force characters pop up in this volume, in which the Turtles co-exist with various superheroes; they also name drop Radical, from Lawson and Ryan Browne's Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #5, also from 1988). She moved there for safety's sake after an incident involving werewolves (I think that story eventually gets told in Tales...maybe in #7, which, at the very least, has Shadow and werewolves on the cover...?)

Meanwhile, something weird is happening on the moon, something involving a huge robot and the Utrom aliens, a storyline that will play out in the background for a bit before coming to the foreground in the final issues of this collection, presenting a world-altering event that will change the old status quo for the Turtles and push the premise of the franchise into new, unique territory. 

As this volume proceeds, the characters get various side stories, perhaps the most interesting of which involves an injured Michelangelo being taken to a secret super-hospital for superhero types, The Kurtzburg Memorial Hospital (Named for its founder, a man who a member of Justice Force tells Michelangelo was "a great visionary...some of the super-types call him 'The Father of Us All'").

Eventually we find out what the Utroms and their robot friend are up to. In scenes that echo the then-fresh memories of 9/11 to an extent, with relatives frantically calling one another and the whole world seemingly glued to their television sets, alien ships openly arrive on Earth, establish a base in the Atlantic offshore of New York City and then openly establish contact with the world. 

The Utroms are, they say, not here as invaders but as visitors, and they have come to welcome Earth to the universe of worlds inhabited by intelligent life and share their amazing technology. Because they realize their presence will prove controversial, they will give the world one year to either accept or reject them.

This is then followed by a time jump of a few months, during which the Turtles, welcomed to the Utrom island base by their old friend Fugitoid, are now able to walk the world openly, as now that aliens of various types are known to be real and are now a regular, if not common, presence in New York City, everyone just assume the Turtles are themselves aliens. 

It's a pretty good place to close the volume too, with our heroes finding themselves in the middle of a radically changing new world.

The comics are black-and-white, as they should be, and first Laird and then Talbot do so much work inking and toning Lawson's art that it feels rich and textured, giving the book the same famously "gritty" work of the original Mirage volumes. 

Laird fills the book with bizarre visuals for Lawson to draw, including during a mysterious scene set in the jungle where a cryptozoological expedition encounters a Kirby-esque alien with Kirby-esque technology among the superheroes, aliens, robots, spaceships, advanced technology and, near the end, even The Foot Clan, who end up involved as the Utrom wants a security force that doesn't need to rely on weapons of any kind. The artist handles it all with aplomb, his style providing connective tissues between this then-new work and the TMNT story that it is building off of. 

I didn't find it as engaging 25 years ago as I do now, which I think has a lot to do with originally reading it in the drips and drabs of chapters every month or so (or longer, if there are delays), while now read in a big chunk of almost 200 pages, the text feels denser and more cohesive. As Laird was writing a consistent story here, rather than the sort of sometimes serial, sometimes standalone stories of he and Kevin Eastman's original series, this feels like a graphic novel in a way those comics didn't and is thus better read in trade, I think. 

This volume includes the original covers, but, because IDW is apparently republishing it as single issues too, there are also plenty of new variant covers. There are new coves by Lawson (which are interesting, as they provide a contrast with his 2001 art, and one can see how much more stylized it has become over the years), a couple by Talbot (whose art is great and so distinct I really wish IDW would hire him to do his own one-shot at some point instead of just the occasional cover), one by Eastman (which seems somehow wrong, as this series originally came out during a time when he wasn't involved with the Turtles at all) and a rather weird one by Laird and A.C. Farley (which looks rather old, based on the Turtles' over-bite, and they are drawn wearing their space wrestling costumes from Archie's 1989 TMNT Adventures #7; also, it's hard to see any Farley in the image, and he has a pretty distinct take on the Turtles). Steve Lavigne, Ken Mitchroney, Josh C. Lyman and Khary Randolph and Emilio Lopez provide covers as well.

So, what happens next...? 

Well, the back cover says that TMNT: Journeys "will collect all 32 currently available issues in six total volumes," which is somewhat odd phrasing. I am curious what, if anything, IDW plans to do with the companion Tales of The TMNT series (and some other comics tied to volume 4, like the miniseries Raphael: Bad Moon Rising). 

While Tales was very much an anthology series, with different creative teams tackling stories from throughout TMNT history, if I recall correctly, quite a lot of them were rather closely tied to the ongoing storyline of Laird and Lawson's main series, and, in fact, Lawson did a lot of these, too. I don't know if these issues are necessary to what I guess we can now call the Journeys storyline, but I think they are at least significant (Also? Many of them are damn good). Clicking around covers on the Grand Comics Database, it seems like some of these have already been collected by IDW in Tales collections, though, so I'm not sure if the publisher will follow Journeys with some Journeys specific collection of Tales or not.

Anyway, at the very least, I am excited about the next five volumes of Journeys and, as I've said many times before, I wish IDW would commission some new TMNT comics from Lawson, Talbot, Dooney and the like, comics in which they let them do pretty much whatever they want, in whatever continuity they like...

BORROWED:

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Vol. 20 (Viz Media) Given that Akira and his friends just recently had a short adventure in outer space a few volumes ago, it seems strange to say that this volume stretches credulity, but, um, this volume stretches credulity.

That is in large part because of Akira's determined self-assuredness and bravery when facing an impossible task which, given how big the task is and how unlikely it is that he and the gang can actually achieve it, feels like delusional recklessness.

The plan for a while has been that, once their scientist friend creates a successful vaccine for the zombie plague sweeping the world, they would take it to the military base in zombie-free Okinawa for distribution.

Unfortunately, it seems that Okinawa is now being overrun by zombies and is in danger of falling; if that happens, all hope for getting the vaccine around the world seems to be lost. And so, Akira resolves to save the still-living holdouts there. How? Well, um, I'll let him explain: "How about we have Mr. Kosaka fly us there... ...and come up with a plan to save everyone on the base along the way?"

When he's questioned, he simply smiles and poses, along with all of his friends, who seem similarly confident, and gives a little speech: 

I don't care about a zombie army.

I won't let that... 

...stand in the way of me reaching my goal...

In fact, I'd rather be eaten by a zombie than give up!

Now, Harao Aso and Kotaro Takata's zombie apocalypse comedy has never been realistic, and volume 20 is no place to start, but it has always been believable, or at least suspension-of-belief-able, so this passage struck me as a little odd. It wouldn't have been hard for writer Aso to come up with a slightly more palpable way to sell their mission, like, for example, having Akira and company going to scout the situation out, rather than declaring their intention to save the day while completely winging it.

As to how they are planning to get to Okinawa, well, Akira meets a couple of friends from the past, one of whom was a retired pilot. Inspired by Akira, they have made a list of their own—"100 Places We Want to Visit Before Becoming Zombies"—and have been traveling in their little plane. They offer to fly our heroes there.

Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately), with abandoned airplanes scattered willy-nilly all over the air strips and abandoned cars filling the roads, there's nowhere to attempt a landing, so our heroes will have to either give up or parachute into town. And what do you know, skydiving happens to be one of the relatively few items left on the bucket list...! (This is what they are doing on the pretty great cover for this volume.)

During their dive, the boys and girls get separated by a strong wind, presumably because the girls are lighter than the boys. This means the girls land in the city, which they find eerily abandoned. But, after doing some shopping for new bathing suits, they meet a new character, who is apparently the last surviving person there, and then quickly find out where all the zombies are...they've gathered into one massive horde that seems to go on forever (During a tense scene where the girls hide from the zombies, Aso and Takata spend a series of three consecutive double-page splashes to depict the horde passing them by.

That new character is Yui Yonamine, a bespectacled young woman who seems to have a superpower: The ability to predict where a zombie might next appear to attack.

I love this.

Yui's "power" is actually just that she has always suffered from extreme anxiety and has thus has always expected the absolute worst to happen in each and every situation. During a zombie apocalypse, of course, there's a lot more to be anxious about, and the chances are good that the absolute worst actually will happen.

So, for example, when she and the girls are running from part of the horde, Izu suggests they escape into the alleys, but Yui responds, "But there could be... ...zombies in the alley!" Two panels later, the alley is filled with zombies. Shizuka suggest they duck into the sewers, Yui says there could be zombies there, and then the manhole goes flying as a quartet of zombie try to squeeze their way up and out of it. 

With her anxiety disorder-turned-zombie radar, Yui has managed to find a way to survive, coming into the city for supplies and retreating to a nearby island in a clever way (that checks off another item on the bucket list, at least for the girls). She keeps going in hopes of finding her long lost friend.

Coincidentally, the boys, who land on the beach and end up trapped atop a hotel, meet a guy who I suppose is supposed to be Yui's friend. The two parallel stories become explicitly so by the split-panel ending, as Akira and Shizuka, who by this point thinks a lot like her boyfriend, inspire the two survivors with the exact same language: "We've got to find each other again... ...and no zombie can stand in the way of that goal!"

One of the many fun aspects of this series has been seeing Aso and Takata address interesting aspects of a zombie-plagued world and I for one am happy to see someone finally address what a person suffering from anxiety might be like in these circumstances. The results are fun and funny, although after so many months of finding her worst-case scenarios constantly coming true, it's probably going to take a lot more than the standard meds and cognitive behavior therapy for poor Yui to deal with her anxiety going forward. Of course, this is fiction, and Akira and friends have always been able to inspire the people they meet to succeed, so I'm sure she'll be okay...

REVIEWED: 

Aurora and the Orc (First Second) This new book from Lewis Trondheim is a weird one. At the beginning, it reads like a gag strip with an interesting premise (and some seemingly arbitrary rules governing aspects of it), but it rather gradually evolves into a continuity strip, and then something of a graphic novel. This makes the reading a bit challenging, as the gags can be a bit hit or miss, and I was tempted to give up early, but I'm glad I hung in there. Beyond the interesting format and approach to the storytelling, there's an (unfortunately) always relevant, evergreen moral...and, of course, plenty of jokes about Tolkien-esque fantasy settings and stories. More here. 

Offside (Graphix Scholastic) By complete coincidence, I read this graphic novel about young soccer players learning to work together as a team the same week I read the first volume of Blue Lock, which is also about young soccer players, but, um, the complete opposite...? This is well made, but I don't know that it has much to offer older readers like you guys. More here. 

Orion (DC Comics) Well, after reviewing Ngozi Ukazu's second original graphic novel based on Jack Kirby's New Gods characters and concepts for Good Comics for Kids and then sharing my favorite parts in this blog post, I'm not sure I have much more to say about it today. 

Spider-Man: Mighty Mayhem! (Abrams Fanfare) In Mike Maihack's fourth "Mighty Marvel Team-Up" graphic novel, the cartoonist has Spidey, Thor-in-the-shape-of-a-frog, Heimdall-in-the-shape-of-a-key-fob and two pigeons travel the Nine Realms searching for Asgardian characters and artifacts transformed by the magic of The Enchantress. 

Yes, that's right. I said Nine Realms. Nine. After all, that is how many realms there are in Norse mythology, that's how many realms there were in Marvel's version of the various Thor comics mythology and that's how many worlds emanate from "YGGDRASIL, the world tree" in Valkyrie's explanation on page 56 of this graphic novel

As for the tenth realm Heven, introduced in 2014 as the realm occupied by Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane's old Spawn character Angela, well, I assumed Maihack would just ignore that, in part because these books seem to be inspired as much by the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the comic book one (Here, for example, both Valkyrie and Heimdall have dark skin, as in the movies rather than the pale skin of their original comics appearances) and, in part, because reminding people of the name "Neil Gaiman" while they are trying to enjoy a comic book now is fairly fraught. (We certainly don't want anyone from this comic's target audience learning more about this Neil Gaiman person, do we?)

But I was wrong. 

In a sort of comic book "after credits sequence," a three-panel page that follows both the last page of the comic and an "About the Creator" page featuring a headshot and bio of Maihack, we see Loki-in-the-form-of-a-crocodile laying atop a sign that reads "Welcome to Heven". In the first panel, Loki says, "Brother? Hello? Tenth realm, remember?"

When I got to that point, I went back to page 56, on which Maihack drew Yggdrasil and the nine realms...and notice that he also included the tenth realm Heven there, although it's much smaller than the other nine, and semi-hidden in the upper boughs of the tree, a branch cutting across the cloud it seems to consists of and obscuring part of the "N" in "Heven."

That's odd, I thought, as the three panels focusing on the "Welcome to Heven" sign also obscure the name "Heven"; in fact, you can only see the very tops of the letters that make up the word "Heven", so that if you didn't already know that it was the name of the tenth realm (and/or notice Heven on page 56 and match it to this image), you wouldn't know what it was meant to say.

So that made me curious: Did Maihack, Marvel and/or Abrams Fanfare not want to make the fact that there was a place named Heven populated with angel-like beings in Marvel's cosmology explicit, even while telling a joke referring to the existence of the tenth realm? And was this a religious consideration, made so as not to offend some Christians...?

Anyway, here's a review of Mighty Mayhem! (Although, given that this is Maihack's fourth Spider-Man book, you should probably already know that it is good.)

A couple of thoughts and questions I had about Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Spoilers, obviously)

•There's been a lot of talk about superhero fatigue, and that Marvel Cinematic Universe having become less and less of a selling point in and of itself (and I agree the cross-movie mega-story has been completely unmoored and ponderous compared to the early days; the producers never bothered to replace the original hook of building The Avengers team and then building towards the Thanos conflict with the Infinity gems/stones, so there hasn't really been any narrative momentum since Endgame). Regardless, I think this particular film did a rather remarkable job of being a Spider-Man story while also being so firmly set within the/a Marvel Universe that it could pull characters and concepts from all over the publisher's works without too much strain.

I mean, in addition to all the expected Spider-Man supporting characters and some Spider-Man villains (whose roles vary from considerable, like that of The Scorpion, to barely-there, like Tombstone, Boomerang and The Tarantula), the film also makes substantial use of The Punisher (although, given his origins, maybe we could consider him a Spider-Man character too...?), The Hulk, The Avengers via Black Widow, Daredevil's The Hand, Damage Control (in a very different incarnation than that of the comics) and even a character from The X-Men. 

It's impossible to imagine a Spider-Man film with that much...Marvel Comics on the screen even a few years ago, you know...?

•I liked that I had no idea who the villain was and what their goal was through so much of the film. That's so unusual for a big superhero film like this, where the casting and marketing inevitably spoil that aspect and, even if it somehow doesn't, a passing familiarity with the comics or the franchise's previous iterations usually means you can guess such things pretty quickly while sitting in the theater. Instead, I found myself wondering if Spider-Man had any villains capable of mind-control or bodily possession as the character began to contend with an unusual threat that could hop from one person to the next and coming up empty.

•I probably should have guessed who the main antagonist was a bit earlier, of course, knowing that Sadie Sink was cast in the film, the role she was playing was being kept secret and there are only so many redheads in Marvel Comics she could be playing (And it wasn't likely she would be playing Spider-Man's Amazing Friend Firestar).

•So, um, what do we think Peter Parker did for a living here...? Like, how did he make rent...let alone afford all of those computers and gadgets...? Where did he get his flower money...?

•Did anyone call Frank "The Punisher" at any point in the movie...?

•I wish they would have given Scorpion a mask or cowl or headgear of some kind; he looked a little naked to me without it.

•Based on the trailer, I thought MJ's boyfriend, who is in one scene and has about as many lines as Tombstone, was meant to be a grown up, more dreamy Flash Thompson. I'm glad I was wrong about that (Tony Revolori's Flash appears only briefly, via a goofy photo on Ned's Spider-Man board, as a suspect for who Ned thinks it might be under the mask).

•I was kind of surprised to find that, given the involvement of a powerful telepath in the plot, the filmmakers didn't just use that character to "fix" Ned and MJ, restoring the memories of Peter Parker in their pasts that Doctor Strange's spell had erased in the previous film. (Although the ending was fairly cryptic and seemed to suggest that their memories of Peter still existed on some subconscious level...at least in the case of Ned, who had a sort of automatic, physical response to a memory related to Peter when he was prompted, even though MJ didn't seem to have a similar reaction at any point.)

•I suppose Marvel doesn't quite have all their shit together in terms of introducing the next generation of X-Men, but I was also a little surprised the end credit scene didn't involve even the suggestion of this universe's Charles Xavier or one of his agents reaching out to Jean, which would both give a future X-Men franchise a pretty big film for a launching point and tease a happy resolution to the character's lack of friends and family.  

•The end credits scene we got was actually quite lame and I regretted sitting so long in the theater waiting for it. I'm not clear if it was meant to refer to Avengers: Doomsday (Is Spidey even in that? He wasn't in the trailer at all), or to something in a fifth Spider-Man movie. Hell, maybe the next one will involve astronaut John Jameson/Man-Wolf/Stargod. Go on Marvel Studios; give us a space-set Spider-Man movie involving an alien symbiote and Jameson/Man-Wolf/Stargod...I dare you...

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 7

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #31 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•Say, did you know that David Mazzucchelli inked this cover...? He did!

•This issue sees the introduction of Spirit, who is referred to repeatedly as "Spirit Iron-Knife" ("Spirit" is his codename, while "Charlie Iron-Knife" is his real name). Spirit is technically the team's second Native American member, following Airborne, but his character design makes his origins more obvious. He wears his long hair in braids, he has a headband and he even wears a loincloth over his pants. My main memory of him from the cartoon was that he had a pet bald eagle named Freedom and sometimes fought Storm Shadow, so I guess he was there supposed to be pretty well versed in martial arts. I do wonder if I revisited the cartoon show today, if his portrayal would be particularly cringey or not.

In this issue, Hawk, Ace and Wild Bill are abusing government resources to drop Snake-Eyes off at his mountain cabin so he can take his leave there ("This is a training flight, Ace," Hawk says when questioned, "If Snake-Eyes wants to parachute out while we happen to be over his cabin in the high Sierras, that's not my business...").

After Snake-Eyes jumps, we meet Spirit, who, with Airborne, has been hiding in a cargo container throughout the flight. Hawk has apparently assigned the pair to watch over Snake-Eyes in secret.

•At his cabin, Snake-Eyes has taken off his bodysuit and facemask, and is wearing civilian clothes...including a wide-brimmed camouflage hat that keeps his eyes and the upper half of his face in perpetual shadow. Remarkably, the rest of his face looks completely normal, which is...odd, given how many times we've been told how horribly disfigured he's supposed to be and seen people reacting to the sight of his face (Writer Larry Hama will eventually explain why Snake-Eyes looks normal without his mask now, but not for a few more issues, so I was pretty puzzled by this.)

•What does a ninja commando do on leave while at his mountain cabin...? Well, Snake-Eyes plays fetch with a wolf.

•Cobra Commander has sent Destro, Firefly and Crimson Guardsman "Fred Broca" into the mountains, following a tracer that Zartan had put on the plane that dropped Snake-Eyes off. While Fred drives, Destro and Firefly sit in the backseat, wearing the comic book standard disguises: Wide-brimmed hats and trenchcoats. 

•Conveniently, Snake-Eyes has changed back into his uniform, complete with all the pouches strapped on, when Fred pulls up to the cabin. Seeing Snake-Eyes in the door, Destro immediately opens fire. Snake-Eyes dodges the first hail of bullets, grabs his Uzi and starts blasting back. A huge firefight has broken out, complete with explosions, as Destro fires a wrist-rocket and Snake-Eyes targets their car's gas tank. 

•Hearing the first shots, Spirit and Airborne rush to the cabin. They were positioned, we are told, ten miles away. I am sure the Joes are all in peak physical condition, but I think Hama over-estimates just how fast human beings can run. In what couldn't possibly be more than a few minutes, they cover five miles, with Spirit cajoling Airborne "It's only another five miles!"

•Destro takes a few bullets to the face. I like when bullets bounce of his metal head. Here, they go "TZING!" and "CLANG!" and he responds simply with "Unnhh! He nicked me!" If only he could have worked something about polished beryllium steel into the panel...

•Seventeen action-packed panels later, Airborne and Spirit arrive! Dudes shouldn't be on the Joe team; they should be in the Olympics. 

•Airborne announces their presence in a way that offends Spirit. I thought that interesting because, when we first met him, Airborne corrected Snow Job when he called him "Indian" rather than "Native American"; of course, he can call himself "Indian" if he wants...

•Things look grim for Snake-Eyes. Firefly had tossed a grenade into his cabin, and though Snake-Eyes threw a big, heavy table atop it, the force of the explosion was enough to bounce him off a wall. Destro enters and seems to have the drop on the prone Joe, pointing his gun at him and telling him, "I think you will die like a dog..."

And hey, speaking of dogs, Destro is about to pull the trigger when he thinks he hears a dog, but it turns out to be "A wolf!!!" Snake-Eyes' semi-tame wolf friend pounces just in time, engaging Destro and keeping him too busy to pull the trigger.

•Eventually, Destro is able to beat back the wolf with his metal gauntlets, dismissing it with pretty much exactly what you might think Destro would say: "Get off me, you filthy cur!" 

(I guess I would have also accepted "mangy cur").

•The issue ends in highly dramatic fashion. By this point, Airborne and Firefly have shot each other, Spirit shot Fred, Spirit and Destro ran at one another shooting and then the cabin explodes. The children of 1985 would have to wait an entire month to find out who lived and who died. Luckily, in 2026, we have only to turn the page of Image Comics' G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Compendium One...

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #32 (1985)

Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushynsky

•What's this? A cover featuring Zartan and his Dreadnoks? That seems an odd choice, given where we left off last issue. 

•Everyone from last issue's battle on the mountain looks to be in pretty rough shape on this issue's opening splash page. Destro, at least, still seems conscious, and as for Snake-Eyes...? Well, the smoking ruin the background is his cabin, where we last saw him.

Into this tableau strides a person whose identity is disguised by their winter gear. The newcomer shoos away the "carrion birds," telling them, "These men have too much meanness in them for your delicate stomachs!" Noting that this figure speaks to vultures, the wounded Spirit asks him if he has "medicine powers."

Destro says nothing but aims a pair of wrist-rockets at the man's back and fires them from what is probably not more than 20 feet away. Without so much as looking over his shoulder, the stranger whirls his climbing axe in a horizontal vertical eight shape, deftly deflecting both rockets with a "SPAK!" and "KA-THAKK!" and they fly harmlessly off-panel. 

I'm not sure why they didn't explode either on contact with his axe or when they landed somewhere nearby, but I guess the stranger must have hit them just so.

The stranger pulls off his hood and goggles and introduces himself as The Soft Master. He said he already knows who the Cobra agents are, and tells Destro that Firefly's wounds are superficial, so that he can "help you carry this other villain off this mountain and leave me to my work."

He tosses an armful of guns after them, adding "And take these weapons with you. They are useless to me."

•Hama leaves the action on the mountain just long enough to check in on The Pit, where preparations are underway for a party, to introduce two new Joes to the comic, both of whom were 1984 releases in the toy line: Recondo, a jungle trooper with a jaunty hat and big handlebar mustache, and Blowtorch, a yellow and red clad flame thrower. Their introduction isn't terribly dramatic; they are riding in a Jeep driven by Clutch, dropping off ice cream and soda for the party. 

•Fred, the most badly wounded of the Cobra agents, is mad at Firefly and Destro for leaving rather than staying to fight, and Destro tells him, "I am not fool enough to fight a man who can move faster than I can see." It's not entirely clear, but it looks like the tail on a dialogue balloon or two attributes dialogue meant to be Fred's to Firefly on the page featuring the retreating Cobra.

•Back by the cabin, The Soft Master heals Spirit and begins extracting the two bullets in Airborne...apparently with his bare hands. The portly ninja gives a little speech that sounds a bit like "guns don't kill people, people kill people": 

Guns do not covet wealth, seek revenge or justify their actions with righteousness. Fear not the weapon, but the man who wields it.

Though middle-aged Caleb is a staunch proponent of gun control, an issue that never even occurred to eight-year-old Caleb in 1985, I guess I can buy what the Soft Master is selling here.

•I'm much less convinced by The Soft Masters reasoning for why he gave the Cobra guys their guns back:

These are desperate, crafty men. Who knows what kind of diabolical instrument of destruction they could improvise if they were driven to such extremes?  

... 

We would be battling the unknown. Give a man a weapon and he will use it. 

We know their weapons and therefore we know their limitations. 

Maybe...? Although I guess it's easier to dismiss the danger gun-wielding enemies might pose if you're fast enough to knock missiles out of the air. 

•In Springfield, Major Bludd and The Baroness are training Billy, who they had previously caught snooping in a Cobra office disguised as a circus bus, on how to assassinate Cobra Commander for them. They are using the old bad cop/sexy cop routine, apparently. 

I like that Billy's "Cobra Youth" costume looks pretty much exactly like what I would have been wearing in Cub Scouts at the time (save for Cobra sigils on it rather than images of a bear's head).

I also find myself wondering, would I have shot a fascistic terrorist in the face if a hot lady in glasses and black leather had asked me too and hugged me...?

•As for the cover boys, they only appear on three pages of this issue. They are speeding down the highway on their motorcycles, recapping their earlier adventure at McGuire Air Force Base, when the back of a semi trailer labeled "Arbco Moving" opens up in front of them. Inside, they find Cobra Commander in a sort of mobile office. He tells them he wants them to be his personal bodyguards, and when Zartan asks what happened to previous personal bodyguard Storm Shadow, the Commander says the ninja is locked up in inescapable Alcatraz and, besides, "he was getting too nosey...He might have found out something dangerous about his uncle!"

As the Commander says this, we see an exterior of the trailer, and Storm Shadow is clinging to its top, his ear to the roof so that he can hear what is being said within. Once the truck arrives in Springfield, Storm Shadow will reveal himself to the Commander, and explain how he made his escape from Alcatraz.

Later, the Commander tells Storm Shadow that he knows Bludd and The Baroness are plotting against him, and promises to reveal to him the name of the assassin who killed his uncle The Hard Master if the ninja is able to keep him safe through the big upcoming Cobra rally.

•Back on the mountain, The Soft Master finds that Snake-Eyes and his wolf had managed to jump into a secret trap door before the cabin exploded, and that they are both alive, but unconscious. Spirit goes off to find firewood, and has a brief conversation with a bald eagle, which alerts him to a blood trail...this belonging to Fred, who snuck away from Destro and Firefly while they were asleep. He's heading back to the cabin to finish off the wounded Joes, Soft Master or no Soft Master.

As noted previously, on the cartoon, Spirit had a pet bald eagle named Freedom. I wonder, is this meant to be Freedom? Will Spirit and this eagle meet up again and become friends? Or is this just Hama kinda sorta working Freedom into the comic without actually committing to Spirit having an eagle partner with him all the time?

•Destro and Firefly, who have come back up the mountain to retrieve Fred, think they've gotten the drop on Spirit, who seems completely nonplussed by their presence, and is in the process of walking slowly backwards towards them. Why? Because there is a giant fucking bear in front of him. The bad guys didn't see the giatn fucking bear though, and they have woken it up.

Take a moment to look at that bear. Note that it not only dwarfs the humans in the panel, but that they are in the foreground and it in the background. That is one huge bear. 

•The bear trees the trio, and Firefly is about to drop a purse full of plastic explosives on it when Spirit intervenes, noting that the explosion would also knock down the tree they are in ("For someone called the 'Firefly' you're not very bright," Spirit scolds him; sick burn, Spirit!)

He grabs the purse, drops it around the bear's neck, and then jumps to the ground himself, taking off at a run. His plan is to have the bear give chase to him, and get blown up as it does so, safely away from the base of the tree.

The bear doesn't cooperate, though, and starts to climb the tree. The result? The bear is apparently vaporized in the explosion, while the tree snaps at the trunk, topples off a cliff then plunges into a river below, with Destro and Firefly still clinging to it.

•That "AAAIIIIEEEEEEE" doesn't seem all that dignified for such hard, dangerous men as Firefly and Destro, but who am I to judge...? It's not like I've ever clung to a tree that has been blown off a cliff by explosives before...

•On the penultimate page of the issue comes the moment I have been waiting for since I started reading the series a few months ago: The introduction of my favorite G.I. Joe member, and an early crush of mine, Lady Jaye (Although her fellow new Joe, Ripcord, calls her "Lady J" here).

I can't really explain exactly why eight-year-old Caleb developed a crush on this particular cartoon character rather than the equally shapely Scarlett, Cover Girl or The Baroness. (I did find Zarana, who hasn't yet been introduced into the comics, attractive as a kid too, though.)

It might have been he short hair, which I've always liked...although maybe the cartoon is the reason I like women with short hair...? 

It might be that while she didn't wear the tight-fitting costumes that Scarlett and The Baroness did, her shirt somehow seemed sexier to me than, say, The Baroness fetish gear-esque black leather and corset get-up. On the cartoon, she didn't wear a shirt under it, and she didn't have it buttoned or zipped all the way up all the time, so there was always a little triangle of bare flesh between the base of her neck and her chest. I don't think they ever showed much in the way of cleavage on the cartoon, but that particular costuming choice at least alluded to the possibility of cleavage, I guess. (The image of her on her "file card", the illustrated part of the packaging the figures came in, had her in a shirt with a zipper and there it was pulled down enough to reveal some rather significant cleavage for a children's toy.)

It might have simply been the fact that her voice was somehow more appealing than that of the other female characters on the show too, I guess.

By the way, as an adult I stumbled across Matt Baker's character, Canteen Kate. Is it just me, or does Lady Jaye seem inspired by the character...?

Not so much the Lady Jaye action figure, but certainly the cartoon character...and, to a lesser extent, the comic book character. 

•Anyway, Lady Jaye and Ripcord don't get as dramatic an entrance into the comic as some of the other Joes have in the past—a symptom, I imagine, of Hama having to introduce more and more new characters at a quicker clip as the comic tried to keep up with the toy line and cartoon—and they basically just walk into The Pit.

There, they are confronted by Grunt and Scarlet, the latter of whom seems particularly confrontational, so much so that Lady Jaye immediately sasses her and Scarlett responds with, "Why, you little--" And then Lady Jaye calls Scarlett "this tawdry redhead". And then, when Ripcord does finally show Grunt and Scarlett their orders, Lady Jaye seems to take some satisfaction in announcing that they they are the old-timers' replacements.

I thought it noteworthy that Scarlett and Lady Jaye have so much enmity toward one another right of the bat. 

If you recall, when Scarlett first met Cover Girl back in #16, the two women didn't exactly hit it off either. When Rock 'n Roll complimented Cover Girl's shooting, Scarlett immediately dismissed it, saying it's easier to hit targets that don't shoot back than it is to take out actual opponents. 

"Let's reserve our judgement 'til we see how she holds up in a real battle," Scarlett said. 

Cover Girl responded: "Better than your face has, Dearie..."

The women of the Joe team aren't exactly a sisterhood, I guess. 

Now I'm curious to see how Jinx, who will be the final female G.I. Joe to join the team (at least as far as I know), is received when she's finally introduced...

•Finally, Fred ends up dying on the mountaintop from a loss of blood and, as The Soft Master puts it, the loss of a will to live after he realizes how meaningless his vengeance would be. The final page of this issue shows a new Fred, who looks exactly like the old one, arriving at the home of the old Fred to replace him, to the surprise of old Fred's children. 

"You're not our daddy!" the little girl says when she gets close enough to the new Fred to realize something's not quite the same about him. He creepily responds, "I am now."

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #33 (1985)

Art by Frank Springe and Andy Mushynsky

•This issue focuses on two parallel celebrations of sort (And, indeed, the title of the story is "Celebration!"). The Joes are celebrating the grand opening of the new Pit (as well as a surprise they don't yet know about), with General "Iron Butt" Austin in attendance and, in Springfield, Cobra is having a huge rally.

•Snake-Eyes is a real weirdo. 

•Although Airborne mentions that Spirit is asleep, when he shakes the blankets where he things the big guy is, he finds out that Spirit has actually snuck out, leaving his bedroll to make it seem like he was sleeping there. He's actually at a nearby mall on crutches, with Blowtorch and Ripcord. What's he doing there? He wants to visit the florist to look for some plants he can use as medicine to help him heal ("It's not that Spirit mistrusts modern medicine, he just feels that there are some things that the old ways do better," Ripcord tells Blowtorch.)

•At the mall, Spirit notices a man who looks awfully familiar to him and confronts him. This is the "new" Fred Broca who has replaced the old one who died on the mountain. Spirit obviously recognizes him, as he looks exactly like his predecessor, but this Fred doesn't know Spirit. Luckily for him, New Fred's wife and kids know what to do when they see a G.I. Joe agent, and Spirit gets taken down in the space of a panel. 

•How's this for drama? Destro catches The Baroness on her way back from a final coaching-Billy-on-how-to-assassinate-Cobra Commander session and scolds her for her betrayal. Then when she asks what he's ever done to demonstrate his trust in her, he dramatically unmasks in a series of silent panels.

So, what does Destro's true face look like...? Well, apparently, it's something, as the mere sight of it is enough to make The Baroness faint.  Is his face horribly damaged like Snake-Eyes' is...? Is he just so handsome that she immediately swooned into unconsciousness...? Or was she so overcome with emotion at the fact that he showed her his face at all that she passed out...? There's no one way of knowing. 

•Speaking of dramatic, while Destro seems like he's going to let The Baroness and Major Bludd's assassination plot unfold so as not to endanger The Baroness, he notices that Billy seems to be the assassin, and he apparently recognizes Billy and knows something about him that we readers are not yet privy to. 

Destro rushes the stage and manages to stop Billy from shooting Cobra Commander and stop Storm-Shadow from cutting Billy down. Why? Well, he drops a bombshell: Cobra Commander is apparently Billy's father!

•At The Pit, General Austin makes an announcement. All of the original Joes are being promoted...and given desk jobs as the administration arm of the team. All of them except Snake-Eyes, who Austin says will "remain operational"...presumably because he is the coolest and most popular of the Joe team, and would be missed in a way that, say, Grunt or Steeler would not be. 

I imagine if this scene was a way to write off some of the original Joes, who we've been seeing less and less of as new characters keep being introduced. Interestingly, despite what Austin says, we'll still see Scarlet and Stalker going out on missions in the future.

•Finally, regarding the mall plotline, when Fred and family retreat to the parking lot, they notice an army Jeep and Mrs. Broca blows it up with a grenade. In order to give chase, the Joes commandeer a van from Bongo. There's an action movie-esque chase scene, complete with one character jumping from speeding vehicle to speeding vehicle, but ultimately the Broca family gets away. Later, Ripcord returns the van to Bongo and makes an unexpected discovery: Bongo is a girl!

Perhaps surprisingly, Bongo will play a sizable role in a future storyline, but that's for a future post.

Bookshelf #40

This week's bookshelf is a real hodgepodge, with, as far as I can now discern, no real orgainizing principle. These books seem to be almost all small press and/or self-published (with a few prominent exceptions), and to be of such a size that they fit better on this shelf than they might have on other shelves. A few seem to be pretty out-of-place though, like the couple of manga volumes. 

The publisher's represented include AdHouse, Drawn & Quarterly, NBM, Pantheon, Sparkplug, Tokyopop, Viper Comics, Viz. 

Creators include Lamar Abrams, Chynna Clugston, Josh Howard, K. Thor Jensen, Hope Larson, Junko Mizuno, Scott Morse, Paul Pope and Joey Weiser. 

The most recognizable books here though are a trio from the late Marjane Satrapi (the two volumes of Persepolis, although now I think you're more likely to find them as a single volume, and Chicken with Plums) and the two volumes of Art Spiegelman's Maus (Which I would guess is also more commonly published as a single volume at this point).  Note the sun damage to the two volumes of the latter, how the red of the spines is faded at the top. 

There's a lot of interesting books in here—the collected edition of Bone colorist Steve Hamaker's fun Fish N Chips buddy cop comic, L.Neil Smith and company's alternate history/libertarian fantasy Roswell, Texas, manga guide to sex The Manga Sutra, those must-read AdHouse Project... anthologies full of some of your favorite cartoonists—and if I were independently wealthy (that is, I didn't have to go to work ever) I would reread and write my way through this shelf, posting a review a day on the blog like I was able to do in the good old days.

Alas, I need health insurance, food and shelter...