A Month of Wednesdays: August 2026

BORROWED:

Crescent Moon Marching Vol. 1 (Scholastic/Graphix) I was intrigued by this manga when I first heard about it, mainly because my friend who also reads manga used to be in her high school marching band, and thus a manga about high school marching band seemed relevant to her interest. 

When it was finally released, then, I snapped it up, intending to write a review of it for Good Comics for Kids but, alas...but then I remembered that my editor had already written an early review of it a few months back...and it was also highlighted as one of the books of interest in a column on the site the week of its release.  There's no rule that says we can't offer multiple reviews of the same book, of course, but it seemed like overkill for me to review it too. I mean, it's a fine book, and there are some interesting things about it that differentiates it from the pack—it's printed in full color rather than black and white, it's from Scholastic rather than a publisher better known for their manga offerings—but I don't think it's so extraordinary that readers need a third post about it on the site.

So, I'm writing about it here.

Hamachi Yamada's series stars Mizuki, who runs away from home—and the pressures to succeed academically in school, and her demanding mother who is doing the pressuring—to the small, seaside town of Akita, where her aunt lives and runs a small cafe.

While there, she meets an intriguing boy Akira, and shortly afterwards she sees him enter a school gym from which loud and strange noises are emanating. She looks inside, she finds the school's marching band rehearsing, and the poor girl, who is afraid she's wasting her whole youth on studying but has never found anything to really interest her when she's not studying, is awestruck.

Her aunt offers some advice: "Once you find something that sets your heart racing...DON'T LET GO OF IT. You'll regret it when you're older."

And thus before too many more pages pass, somewhere in the second chapter, Mizuki, who has never even held an instrument before, is transferring to Senshu High and joining the marching band. Specifically, she'll be playing the trumpet, the same instrument that Akira does.

The rest of the volume follows her as she learns more about the trumpet and marching band, discovers just how challenging it actually is, meets some of the other members of the band and prepares for their first public show.

Readers, of course, will learn all about marching band along with her, and, personally, as someone with no real experience with the subject, I found it a bit of a revelation. There's some metaphorical stuff about keeping your head up (not unlike Haikyuu's repeated references to volleyball being a sport where you're always looking up) and being part of and in synch with a group, but there's also just all sorts of literal stuff about how complicated it is. I mean, not only do you have to play your instrument, not only do you have to play it with a bunch of other people playing there's, but you have to do so while marching, which means there's a degree of physical challenge (the holding of the instrument, the marching) and a high degree of choreography, so that everyone stays in step, and you don't, say run into the person in front of them and cause them to cut their lip on their instrument (As Mizuki does to Akira at one point). 

I was surprised to see all of this—and maybe I shouldn't have been, but, again, I don't know anything about marching band—and was thus intrigued to see the band members running laps and doing sit-ups (Which maybe isn't universal; that friend I mentioned said they only had to run for punishment sometimes) and the pages and pages of choreography Mizuki finds herself being asked to memorize. 

Like other, similar manga and American comics for young readers I've read, then, this book is about its subject in multiple ways...while also telling dramatic story related to the subject. Will Mizuki find herself through marching band? Will she fit in with this new community? Is she going to end up falling for Akira? (They've already done the manga/anime trope of falling together, so that he lands on top of her)

I mean, I imagine. 

As I said, the book is in color, which is in and of itself rather unusual, and it gives the proceedings not only a vibrancy, but also a particular mood and tone, and helps communicate just why it is that Mizuki is so taken with the band when she first encounters it, as well as the various charms of her new town. 

Okay, so maybe the book isn't an important one to the overall comics medium (Although, I won't be surprised if it finds many fans, and that, to some of them, it will prove to be an important book in their own personal lives), but it is certainly a charming one, and, with the deep, rich, emotional coloring added to a style of art we rarely see in color, it's a beautiful book, too. 

...

Also, I'm kind of curious about the "DANGER BEARS" signs near the school. I guess this is because the school is out in the country, meaning it's possible there are bears around...?

The above panels lead to a joke of sorts, where the rustling and the signage discuss a bear is sneaking through the foliage, but it ends up being one of the characters. But I can't stop thinking about that sign....

Justice League Unlimited: DC KO (DC Comics) I'm just not that interested in DC's latest big event series, DC KO, for all of the obvious reasons. 

It's yet another "crisis" story in the DCU, it involves messing with continuity to some degree yet again, and then there's the big, dumb premise, which seems to be that Circumstances have forced the heroes into a video game-style fight-to-the-death tournament (in which no one will actually die) in order to save the universe (Say, where was Scott Snyder when the brain geniuses who came up with Injustice were brainstorming ways to do just that? DC KO's version seems better than the grim half-the-heroes-are-fascists-in-a-parallel-universe one they settled on).

Despite curiosity about the Plastic Man/Lobo fight* (and a couple of questions), I had planned on skipping it. But, if I did, would I be able to make sense of the latest volume of Mark Waid and Dan Mora's Justice League Unlimited, which, as the subtitle suggests, is apparently a tie-in to DC KO...? 

It was with some trepidation that I cracked the cover, but I assumed I would be alright. I mean, I've been reading reviews of some of the DC KO issues as they came out (and just read a review of the collection a few days before I sat down to write this) and, again, the premise doesn't seem that complicated. Besides, Mark Waid has been writing big event series and tie-ins to such series for about as long as I've been reading comics; if anyone knows how to script a comic so that it ties into an event yet still stands on its own, it's gotta be him, right...?

To my surprise, the big DC event that this arc seemed to tie-in to wasn't DC KO, but rather an entirely different one from long ago: Waid's own 1995 Underworld Unleashed. 

See, while the book acknowledges what is going on in DC KO—Earth is falling to Darkseid again and thus the heroes are trying to evacuate the entire population of the world somewhere safer, most of the big guns are busy elsewhere—the plot here is that many relatively minor and/or silly villains have been given power-ups by the devil Neron in exchange for their services (here, though, without the accompanying redesigns), and, in order to stop them, a team of heroes must journey to hell itself and attempt to trick Neron by preying on his inability to resist making deals. (It also, to a lesser degree, reminded me a bit of 1994's Zero Hour; I'll get to that in a moment).

How does this tie into DC KO? Well, it seems pretty clear that it doesn't actually have to, and that Waid is basically just marking time with this arc, filling a certain number of issues of his ongoing series with something that won't interfere with DC KO, and at least gestures towards relation to it. He does manage some connective tissue, though, so much so that a less cynical reader—like, say, the Teenage Caleb who read Zero Hour and Underworld Unleashed—might not see the strings.

Essentially, with so many heroes starring in DC KO proper, the remaining Justice Leaguers are meant to be helping with the evacuation of the world, but all the villains villain-ing is keeping them from being able to do so, and thus the distraction needs to be dealt with. And as to why so many villains are willing to work with Neron at all—even those like Captain Cold and Heatwave, who got screwed over pretty badly by him once before—well, they are sure that Earth has really had it this time, and Neron has promised them sanctuary in Hell if they just do his bidding here at the end of the world. 

Waid divides the arc into two real plotlines. One, set on Earth and the Watchtower above, where we see series regulars like Red Tornado, Blue Beetle Ted Kord and The Challengers of the Unknown do satellite stuff while Mary Marvel, Kid Flash, Doctor Occult, Martian Manhunter**, Cadejos, Boruka and Golden Frog and Airwave fight with the villains on the ground (And there, as per usual, plenty of cameos, although here there more from villains than from heroes). 

The other involves Mister Terrific taking a team of heroes to Hell to confront Neron. But with the heroes spread so thin, who is left to go on a suicide mission with Mister Terrific? Well, luckily there are all those time-lost heroes from the past and the future who have apparently been hanging around the Watchtower since the end of "We Are Yesterday", some of whom I know and some of whom I don't. (Conveniently, assembling a League of random heroes from different timelines for the space of an arc also means Waid can tell a JLU story without actually using any heroes who are busy elsewhere in the event and its tie-ins.)

These guys are actually a pretty perfect team for Terrific to use too, as he tells them that they aren't actually their real selves, but "remnants" of those selves plucked from the timestream, distinct entities that will cease to exist when everything is straightened out. (And here's the bit that reminded me of Zero Hour, as these heroes know that saving the day ultimately means they're own deaths; in Zero Hour, it was slightly different, but some time-lost heroes knew that fixing the timestream meant they will return to their own timelines, and, in at least some cases, that's a death sentence of sorts.) 

Of course, telling them this is probably not all that smart on Terrific's part, even if he does now claim to be the "smartest man on the planet"—not the third smartest, as per usual, but the smartest—as it means they spend their lives a little too freely, and, in at least one case, the looming threat of non-existence leads one to actively hamper Terrific's mission. But I suppose Waid wants us to know just how expendable these guys are, so we don't feel quite so badly when they start sacrificing themselves during their journey through Hell. 

So which time-lost heroes are we talking about here...?

Hook-handed, 1990s Aquaman (Seeing Dan Mora draw him certainly hasn't made me rethink the fact that this is still my favorite Aquaman design); Power Girl Kara Zor-L (That's the pre-Crisis, Earth-2 version, right?); Guy Gardner, Warrior (from 1994's Guy Gardner: Warrior #17, from the look of it, although his hair is wrong); electric Superman; the Interlac-speaking Gold Hawk, who I think might be the first Hawkman incarnation (He's one of the two characters completely unfamiliar to me here); a Batman Beyond who is actually Tim Drake (So, the Batman from Futures End, I think...?); Kingdom Come's Green Lantern Alan Scott; a Doctor Fate (Real name Sofie; this is the other one I can't place) and Justice Legion-A's Owlwoman from the 853rd Century (Whom I first remember seeing in the Grant Morrison/Dusty Abell contribution to 1999's DC One Million 80-Page Giant). 

Waid makes a decent enough attempt at giving each of them a moment or so, either in the hours before they embark on their mission, or during that mission itself, at least gesturing towards some form of characterization (like Guy going to see the modern-day Ice and finding out they are no longer together, or Power Girl recording a video message for her current self, the repeating panels of the sequence giving me a flashback to Heroes in Crisis). It's a nice attempt, but it mostly boils down to a character trait apiece: Alan Scott has been doing this a long time, Tim Drake is scared, etc. 

As they journey through Hell, they take turns sacrificing their lives in one big action scene after another, until, by the time they arrive at Neron's throne at the climax, Mister Terrific is there with just one other hero. 

DC's Hell is different here than any I've seen, but then, DC has a lot of versions of Hell, and it's rarely consistent; this one doesn't much resemble that of Underworld Unleashed or Day of Judgment, both of which were Hells ruled by Neron. It's built of some DC stuff (The Demons Three are there to greet the heroes when they first arrive), some stuff from classic mythology (Charon and his ferry) and some stuff unique to this comic; there's a lot of weird monsters with bug-like forms.          

The journey seems to go on perhaps too long—Waid and Mora spend several issues having the heroes fight their way to Neron, whereas Waid and pencil artist Howard Porter did so in less than an issue in Underworld Unleashed #3—and I suspect that had as much to do with marking time as any other aspect of the arc.

Still, Mora is a great artist, and it is, as always, worth one's time picking up comics like this just to see him draw stuff. I certainly enjoyed seeing him revisit some costumes from the '90s—he really makes that temporary Superman costume sing, for example—and getting to draw weirder, scarier stuff than usual. 

As with the first volume of Matt Fraction's Batman, as I read this, I wondered if I maybe I have just been reading DC comics for too damn long now, given how much of this felt overly familiar, with Waid covering ground I have seen covered and re-covered before. I mean, I've lost track of how many times I've seen DC's superheroes journey to Hell since I read Alan Moore's story of Swamp Thing doing so. Of these ten heroes, I've seen Superman, Alan Scott, Aquaman and Guy Gardner all do so before.

So, when they first arrive, and Electric Superman starts stuttering in disbelief, while Alan Scott narrates that, because Superman doesn't believe there is any such thing as an irredeemable soul, "of course his mind is reeling," I thought of the image of a weeping Superman in Neil Gaiman and company's 2000 Green Lantern/Superman: Legend of the Green Flame, which may or may not be canonical, and 1999's Day of Judgment, another time Superman went to hell (That latter trip to hell would have been from a point in his life after which this time-lost version existed, though).

Somewhat disappointingly, while Waid tries to give a bit of characterization and a big action moment to each of the time-lost heroes, he doesn't quite do the same with Terrific...except, of course, for one scene where he uses a logic paradox to trick a gatekeeper and then when he tries to make a deal with Neron. At no point, however, does Waid address how Terrific might feel about the concept of Hell, given that he was, at least earlier in his history, an avowed atheist and skeptic of the supernatural, something he would argue with his fellow members of the JSA about (This despite, of course, that his origin involved The Spectre). 

Maybe later writers addressed the matter of Michael Holt's faith in the years past—Heck, maybe Geoff Johns did so in past pages of JSA or Justice Society of America, and I've read and forgotten about it—but given that Mister Terrific is the one character on this journey who is "real" and stars in Justice League Unlimited, and that he at least had a very strong opinion about the prospects of the afterlife before, I think that might have made more interesting ground to explore than, like, I don't know, seeing an alternate future Tim Drake freak out about being in Hell and trying to live up to the legacy of his Batman, you know?. '

Ah well. It's become clear for a while now that this book is going to be a sort of narrative string around which the beads of various DC event series and crossover events can be strung, an ongoing title in which the mega-story of the whole DC line can play out 20 pages a month. While that isn't very appealing to me, it does have a couple of strong selling points.

This is, after all, a "toy box" comic in which we can see Mark Waid and, often, Dan Mora play with DC's heroes and villains, and one in which we can hope to see unexpected cameos from random, little-seen characters (Check it out! There's a panel featuring Jack O' Lantern in this!). 

Though nothing much new or exciting or imaginative happens in this volume, it still has those elements going for it.

And hey, I was able to follow it, even without having read and/or caring about DC KO...!

REVIEWED:

The Girl Who Loved Monsters (Viking) While it's a little awkward in its construction due to the fact that writer Insha Fitzpatrick is simultaneously trying to set up a series and provide the first in what is apparently meant to be several episodic adventures, once it gets going, the book is actually a lot of fun. I kind of loved the idea of the two dueling books about monsters—one "evil" book and one "good" book—and artist Ashley Robin Franklin (who oddly gets an "Illustrated by" credit on the cover instead of something more accurate) designs and draws a hell of a werewolf. Every time I see or hear the title I can't help but think of Emil Ferris' My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, though. Anyway, my full review of Fitzpatrick and Franklin's book is here. 

Hulk Teach: A Tale of 2 Teachers (Scholastic/Graphix) This is the sequel to Jeffrey Brown's Hulk Teach. In the original comic, a deal worked out by Bruce Banner's lawyer/cousin She-Hulk finds him performing community service to make up for all of the damage caused by The Hulk (instead of being sent to a SHIELD prison), and the form that community service takes is teaching middle school. Here, Banner is joined by a part-time co-teacher with a similar deal: The Fantastic Four's Benjamin Grimm, AKA The Thing. Hilarity ensues. I reviewed the first volume here and the just-released sequel here.

But I want to take this opportunity to talk about an aspect of the books that I didn't mention in the reviews. And it involves a sizable spoiler to them, so, if you haven't read them—and if you like The Hulk, the Marvel Universe and funny comic books, you should definitely read them—please stop reading this post and go away. You can come back and finish this post after you've read both Hulk Teach books. 

Okay, so in the first book Banner meets Mr. Museler, a very peculiar fellow teacher who is something of a foil and rival to Banner...so much so that he acts like a foil and rival, despite the fact that the two are, you know, both middle-school teachers. 

Mr. Museler is a curious character. Not only is he a sort of negative example of a teacher, strictly teaching his class to the test so that they can score the highest in the school (and win a pizza party), rather than prioritizing their learning, but he's also pretty weird. He says he's independently wealthy, and only teaches middle-school as a hobby, rather than it being a job he needs to do in order to make a living (Or it being a vocation). 

And the source of his wealth? A hat factory. Indeed, he is always wearing a comically large hat. 

Here, for reference, is Mr. Museler...or "Hat Man" as The Hulk calls him:

Okay, so why did Brown draw such a tall hat...? Well, given that Museler has an adversarial relationship with Banner/The Hulk in the books and that he has a mustache and the specific shape of his hat, I immediately assumed he was actually The Leader in disguise the first time I laid eyes on him.

And yet Hulk Teach ended without ever revealing that Museler was hiding a very tall head under his very tall hat, and so I decided I was wrong after all. Brown did not create Museler—French for "to muzzle"—as a middle-school teacher alter ego for Hullk villain The Leader afterall, it seemed. I guessed that the mustache was just a coincidence, and that Brown just drew that particular hat like that just because he thought the taller hat was funnier than one that was more standard hat size and shape..

Anyway, in A Tale of 2 Teachers, Museler is once again there to bust Banner and The Hulk's chops—as well as the chops of the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing—competing with them while teaching his class in ways that are suspect, like having them watch movie adaptations of classic works of literature rather than having them reading or using AI to help them writer their speeches.

I was shocked—shocked, I say!—by the events of the climax. Both Banner's class and Museler's class have built robots, and these are fighting in a robot battle royale. Museler's class's robot destroys all the other robots and kind of goes crazy, leaping out of the "Robactagon" at one point, and damaging Museler's signature hat:

As you can see, Museler does indeed have a very big head under his very big hat. Then, in my second-favorite page of the book, The Hulk and The Thing destroy the robot while shouting their catchphrases. A fire breaks out, and the kids build a makeshift aqueduct (something the Hulk had previously taught them about) to put out the fire but, in the process, some splashes on Museler...revealing his green skin!

At this point, Museler/The Leader's dialogue bubbles turn green, the same color as the dialogue bubbles of the gamma-irradiated Hulk and She-Hulk, Banner explains to the kids who The Leader was and how he came to be, and The Thing states the obvious: 

So even though I had immediately suspected that Mr. Museler was really The Leader, because Brown didn't reveal it in the first book, I assumed my suspicion was incorrect...and therefore when Brown did reveal this fact in the second book, I was actually completely shocked!

Bravo, Jeffrey Brown. 

*Actually, from what I've heard on Bluesky, that fight doesn't actually occur in the main series...or, um, anywhere else, aside from the marketing. That sucks...but it also feels sort of appropriate that the most compelling element of a Big Two event comic isn't actually in the comic or its tie-ins, but the marketing for them. 

**Wait, is Martian Manhunter really not in the tournament...? That seems...weird, as he is not only one of the most powerful heroes, one who could swat down the majority of the participants without breaking a sweat, but he's also one of the few who could go all the way. I mean, if anyone in the DCU could take down Superman in a fight, it's J'onn, right...? At this point, one thing I am curious about the tournament aspect of the main series is how Snyder might convincingly sell us on Superman winning rather, I don't know, the last match being The Spectre eliminating Martian Manhunter...

Review: Betrothed to a Fox Demon Vol. 1

I've been reading so many realistic manga of late, particularly ones about highschoolers with crushes on one another, that it was a little weird and a little refreshing to pick up a manga full of some of the things I used to associate with Japanese comics. You know, stuff like swords, demons, battles and Japanese mythology. This particular manga is Anju Hino's Betrothed to a Fox Demon, the first volume of which was released by Square Enix Manga in April. 

In fact, it reminded me a bit of a particular manga—Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha—but only really in a few of the broad strokes, some of which I guess are even apparent from the cover alone. 

On that cover are Kuro Kyogane and Fuyu. Kuro, known as "The Black Wolf", is a social outcast, but he comes from a long lineage of exorcists; in fact, he comes from a clan of exorcists that have defended Japan from demons for a thousand years. 

As Kuo is the clan's last male heir, his grandfather is constantly bugging him to marry, but Kuro has no interest in doing so, as he is completely devoted to eradicating every last demon, something he has acquitted himself to after his parents were killed by demons.

When his grandfather presents the beautiful Fuyu to him as a potential bride, Kuro immediately rejects her...and the very idea that he even needs to marry in order to continue the clan for another generation.

"Exorcists won't be necessary once demons go extinct," he argues. "And since I'm wiping out the demons... ...I don't need a wife."

Fuyu proves even more persistent than Kuro's Gramps, however, and, after proving how much help she can be and (part of) the reason she wants to marry Kuro, he agrees...but things go differently than he expects, as both Kuro's grandfather and his betrothed were keeping a few important details from him.

After a rather unexpected twist, Kuro comes face-to-face with Kyubi, a powerful nine-tailed fox demon that his family had previously sealed away (and which, I should note, probably doesn't look like any nine-tailed fox demons you've seen before), and Fuyu finds herself possessed by it. 

This possession, however, seems to manifest only as a pair of fox ears atop her head and a tail...otherwise, as of the first volume in the new series, she seems perfectly normal (Although she is now a target of other exorcists, as such possessed "vessels" can attract other demons through their "miasma").

By the end of the first chapter, then, about 70 pages in, the premise seems set: Kuro and Fuyu must quest for a cure to her possession, finding themselves beset both by supernatural threats and the exorcists who hunt them. 

These exorcists appear to be organized into something between a guild and an army, as a faction of four agents from "The Exorcism Agency's Pursuit Squadron" follows our heroes into a supernatural black market. They are (mostly) young and good-looking, dressed in all black uniforms and all extremely interesting. 

The plainest of them is a man with an eye-patch and a rifle, the most modern technology in the book, which seems to be set in the later centuries of feudal Japan. There's also a little girl who controls a huge and terrifying puppet; a girl with a very short skirt who was previously set up as a potential wife of Kuro and who carries a scary doll whose face transforms to a scarier masked form; and, finally, Gyobu Monobe, whose face is completely wrapped in bandages, with a few random pins stabbed into them (He might look like the Snake Eyes of the team, but is apparently, like Fuyu, a person possessed by a demon; the marks of his possession are apparently not as cute as Fuyu's). 

Mostly set up then, this volume tells us the story of the two characters on the cover, how they come together, what they are devoting themselves to, and introduces us to some of their adversaries; the book ends with the couple rushing to an assembly of the Exorcism Agency to have their marriage officially recognized, which will allow them to stay together (in much the same way that Gyobu is allowed to work with the Agency, even though he is possessed by a demon). 

The character designs are all quite strong and striking, and full of some interesting surprises (Like the aforementioned puppet, for example). 

What is perhaps most interesting is the demons that populate the book. These don't look much of anything like those you might have seen in other manga or anime and are visually pretty far removed from the sorts of creatures in traditional Japanese folklore.

The Kyubi, for example, looks nothing like a fox, nor does it seem to have any tails. It wears a mask over its eyes...or maybe the "main" eyes on its...let's say "head." Below this horned head, which sits atop a long neck, are a mass of arms...and eyeballs and mouths and a big, weird secondary head. It looks more Lovecraftian than something one might find in traditional Japanese art. (Speaking of traditional Japanese art, there is a tengu in one panel, a corpse of one lying on a table at the black market; it looks like a humanoid chicken with well-developed pecs and abs.)

Other demons include a gigantic crying monster baby which forms an exterior stomach attached by umbilical cord in which it captures and tries to digest its victims, a centipede-esque "dragon" and a shapeless demon that is all mouth that later resolves itself into what resembles a huge two-headed Komodo dragon.

The fist demon we see—Kuro is actually introduced cutting his way free from inside his body with a sword—looks like some sort of toothy, bug-eyed kaiju. 

And then there are these weird little fellows, which look like something that might walk by in a Studio Ghibli film: 

Fuyu, who you can see drools a bit when she notices them passing by above, immediately proceeds to club one to death with her ladle and make them into a stew:

Looks pretty terrible to me! I mean, those guys are clearly fuzzy, right? And she doesn't seem to skin them at all, so I guess eating the "meat" of the stew would mean eating a mouthful of hair, right...? I think I might prefer some of the dishes I've seen in Delicious in Dungeon...

After each chapter, the manga names the various demons that have appeared, and ranks their danger, rarity and intellect with stars. These guys, officially labeled "Low-Level Demon", are one-star all across the board, and their write-up says, "They are found everywhere" and that they are "Nicknamed 'Ingredient-kun' by Fuyu."

That scene is probably the funniest bit, but there is a decent amount of humor throughout, helping level the action and adventure that dominates, and the elements of horror present in the story. 

Review: You and I Are Polar Opposites Vol. 1

They say opposites attract, and that would certainly seem to be the case with Suzuki and Tani who, despite being classmates, could not be more different from one another. 

The pink-haired Suzuki is loud, outgoing and popular, always at the center of a whirl of conversations and social activities. The bespectacled Tani is quiet, stoic and gracelessly direct on the occasions when he does speak to a classmate. (At one point, a classmate contemplating the pair imagines a sort of pyramid chart showing the various levels of popularity within the school hierarchy, and Tani is not even in the chart, but standing off to the side of it and labeled "Out of bounds".)

Nevertheless, Suzuki has a crush on Tani, partially because she thinks he's cute, and partially because she's attracted to the fact that he is always so true to himself and that he doesn't go out of his way to try to please others like she herself does. 

At school, her interest mostly manifests in her trying to include him in the conversation, even when it is something he clearly has no interest in (Like, for example, the best kind of eye makeup). 

Now, I am used to manga romances going on for hundreds and hundreds of pages before any form of consummation, with the characters dithering and fretting for multiple volumes before one or the other comes out and confesses their feelings. 

It was therefore a little surprising that by page 13, the pair are holding hands on a walk home and by page 33 Suzuki has chased Tani down and screamed "I like you!!!" at him. By the time that the first chapter ends, then, the pair are a couple already.

The premise of this particular high school romantic comedy isn't the usual will they/won't they then, but rather if and how two such incredibly different people can make a relationship work.

Throughout the rest of the first volume they walk home again together as a couple, they go on their first date (burgers, shopping and a movie), Suzuki's friends try to make sense of the relationship and the pair work on communicating their feelings for one another more effectively. 

It's all quite fun and cute, if I can use that word (There's a chapter entitled "Cute", in which Tani struggles to figure out exactly what Suzuki means when she uses the word, as she uses it quite often and in a variety of contexts).

The opposite nature of the characters reflected in manga-ka Kocha Agasawa's portrayals of them as well, as any drama involving Tani mostly plays out in narration boxes in his own head, while Suzuki abstracts into cartoonier renderings when her emotions are high, the Usagi-like buns/"meatballs" of her hair sometimes pop off her head when she's surprised and, in one memorable scenes, she glows and sparkles with unstoppable-ity—like Mario after he picks up the star—after a successful first date. 

The manga seems to have run eight volumes, the last of which was released earlier this year, and there's an anime adaptation as well. 

Bookshelf #43

This week's bookshelf is another mostly manga one, thanks in large part to the size of the shelf, and how easily the standard tankobon-style manga volume slip into it. 

At a glance, you will notice that Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2 accounts for the majority of the shelf. Ranma was the very first manga I ever bought and read (this would have been somewhere in the mid-to-late '90s, before I graduated college), and you can see that I had started reading it before Viz had standardized the design for the series. 

I kind of like the older design, where each volume was a different color. I just checked, and not only are the older ones printed right to left, but so too are volumes 22 to 31. The series actually ran 38 volumes, which means I stopped buying new ones seven volumes before the series ended with, what I assume, is the marriage of Ranma and Akane. 

I'm not entirely sure why I never finished it, but I've done something similar with television shows I like...it means that it's still out there to be consumed and enjoyed at a later date. Of course, it has now been so long since I've read Ranma that I fear I would have to start over and re-read everything before I get to those last seven volumes, even tough, from what I recall, the story is pretty simple and repetitive, as Ranma and Akane fight various rivals who have a crush on one of them or the other, many of whom transform when they get wet. 

I am curious how Ranma holds up in 2026, given that it is about a boy that turns into a girl on occasion. I'd definitely be curious to read a trans writer's take on it. (Perhaps less interestingly, it also revolves around an arranged marriage, so I wonder if that element marks it as old-fashioned today or not). I know that there was rather recently a new anime released, so chances are there is a whole new generation of Ranma discourse out there and I just haven't gone looking for it yet...

Just to the left of all the Ranma volumes are a couple of other Takahashi books: The first chunk of Urusei Yatsura (which I've attempted a few times but never made it all the way through), a volume titled The Return of Lum Urusei Yatsura  which I haven't yet read either and the final volume of Maison Ikkoku (I read that series via volumes borrowed from the Columbus Metropolitan Library up until the last volume, which I bought from The Laughing Ogre. I remember liking that series an awful lot, but it has now been so long since I've read it that I would have to re-read it to have a decent conversation about it). 

After Takahashi's work, we get to the comics adaptation of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, of which I have eight volumes. This is based on the same novel that Ang Lee's beautiful 2000 film was...and probably owes its existence, or at least its translation and importation into the U.S., to the popularity of the film. It launched in 2002 and was published by ComicsOne Corp. 

The design and packaging are great, and the book is filled with gorgeous full color art. Another interesting book to revisit, I imagine. I wonder if I got the whole series or not, though; a note at the end of the eighth volume says they are working on volume 9, so I would guess not...

What else does this shelf hold...?

•Kuro Gane Vols. 1-2 In feudal Japan, a young samurai on a mission of vengeance is killed...but a "master inventor" rebuilds him with a new steel body and gives him a talking sword, allowing him to carrry on. 

•Minima Vol. 1 Schoolgirl Ame's favorite toy comes to life. This volume ends with an incredible cliffhanger, I see just by flipping through, so much so that I'm kind of surprised I didn't get the next volume just to see how it is resolved.

•Gacha Gacha Vols. 1-3 Protagonist Kouhei has a crush on his lifelong best friend...who has been acting weird lately. Why? Because she apparently has multiple personalities, and Kouhei is bewildered by the changes from one to the other. Probably not politically correct, huh? There's a lot of fan service in this one, which is rated "OT" for "Older Teen", 16 and up...

•Blank Vol. 1 This is one of Tokyopop's "amerimanga", I believe, which introduced me (and, I imagine, the comics industry) to a lot of talented creators, at least one of whom is among my favorite artists working today. This one is a secret agent action comedy by Pop Mhan, who is one of those artists who moved on from Tokyopop to draw all kinds of super-comics for various publishers and with various writers. My personal favorite of his comics was probably Spyboy with Peter David; he also drew some Batgirl, but from near the end of the original series, when it had gotten pretty badly written...

•Et Cetera Vols. 1-3 I liked this one quite a lot. Another manga Western (like Gun Blaze West, covered last week), it stars cute, pig-tailed Minchao who possesses a really cool and very weird gun, which has a big spherical chamber. It's called "the Eto Gun" and it is, according to the back cover, "a mysterious weapon that uses the spirits of the Zodiac animals to fire unstoppable bullets." So, in the first volume, for example, she shoots a guy in the face with a smiling cartoon rabbit.

•Fruits Basket Vols. 1-2 This one is obviously a very popular manga, but, having given Natsuki Takaya two volumes, I just couldn't really get into it. It's about an orphaned girl who meets a family possessed by the spirits of the (Chinese) zodiac. 

•East Coast Rising. Another Tokyopop book from a familiar name, this is a pirate comic by Becky Cloonan. You all know Becky Cloonan at this point, right?

•Fairy Tale Vol. 1 The art in this is great, and the character designs are strong, but it didn't hook me. It obviously went on to become quite popular though. (Flipping through it again as I write this post, I am reminded that I found that weird little snowman-like character somewhat off-putting. I kind of want to re-read this now if only to see what that guy's all about, and how he might compare and contrast with Frozen's Olaf...)

•DearS Vol. 1 This is the black spine you see. It was apparently an advance copy sent out for review. There's a girl with very long hair and big boobs and, um, that's all I remember about it. Even flipping through it isn't managing to jog my memory at all, and, because it's not the final version of the book, there's no back cover copy. It is the work of "Peach-Pit", which is the name shared by two female manga artists, although when I hear the word, all I can think of is Jason Priestly behind the counter on 90210.

•Magic Knight Rayearth Vol. 1 Another CLAMP book, this one is an epic fantasy featuring magical girl-like heroes with swords and amazing powers. I know I read more of this than I see on my shelves, so I assume I did so via the library. 

•No Need For Tenchi: Unreal Genius Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block introduced me to Tenchi around 2000 or 2001, and I have to assume I found this at Half Price Books, on sale at a convention or on the shelf of a particular Columbus comic shop near campus that I am blanking on the name of, given that it's from 1996. There's a "5" on the cover and spine, but I remember reading it and not having any problem doing so; maybe because, at the time, I was well-versed in the characters and universe from the cartoon...? 

•The Japanese Drawing Room: Victorian Travellers in Japan This slim non-fiction graphic "novel" is by Sakura Mizuki, Shaun Garner and Sean Michael Wilson was published by The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in 2006. The credits page says it is "based on the journal Westward from the Golden Gate by Annie Russell-Cotes. I am assuming it got to me because someone wanted me to write about it. 

On Punch! Vol. 1

Viz Media released the first book in this three-volume series way back in 2006. Why am I just now picking it up? Well, last weekend, when flipping through some of the old manga on my bookshelf, I saw an ad for Rie Takada Punch! in the back of one, and it looked intriguing enough to give it a try. 

A shojo series from the creator of Happy Hustle High, Punch! stars 15-year-old Elle Nagahara, whose love life is impossible.

It's not just that she hails from a family of martial artists. Dad was a boxing champion, Mom was a wrestling champion, and her grandfather, who she affectionately refers to as Gigi, was the first Japanese world champion of Muay Thai kickboxing, and he now runs a gym where he trains young fighters.

No, it's that her grandfather and his one-time rival and best friend long ago promised each other that their grandchildren would marry, which means Elle is kinda sorta promised to 17-year-old professional fighter Ruo. He's quite dreamy, as evidenced by the fact that Elle's best friend and much of the female student body seem to have crushes on him, but, since they grew up together, Elle can't help but think of him as anything other than an older brother.

That's not how he feels, though, and so whenever Elle finds a boy she likes, Ruo's friends from the gym threaten the guy in question, tell them Elle is spoken for and scare him away. As the first volume opens, Elle is reading a letter from her latest totally-normal, not-at-all-involved-in-fighting crush, the handsome but book-ish Yuichi, who has apparently just had a visit from the boys from the gym: "Please leave me alone," it reads. "I'm begging you!"

Still, she's determined not to marry Ruo, and find romance with a normal guy. Or, as she puts it, "I will escape this martial arts hell!!"

That's not quite what happens though. 

A chance meeting at a store with a boy leads to an unlikely fight scene. She sees him hustled into the restroom by a trio of thugs, and when she goes to get the manager to help him, she finds that the boy has beaten up all his attackers, despite the three-on-one odds. One of the guys on the ground then recognizes the boy: "You're... Shindo! Kazuki Shindo from Seisho High..."

Later, when Elle ties to tell Ruo that she doesn't want to marry him, he assumes that she has another crush again, and, under pressure, she blurts out Kazuki's name. At least in this case, when Ruo's friends go to threaten him to back off, Kazuki isn't scared away...in fact, even though he doesn't even know who Elle is at that point, he fights back.

Kazuki then gradually gets pulled closer and closer into Elle's orbit. When he shows up at the gym to fight Ruo, Gigi intervenes, offering to train Kazuki and making the boys promise not to fight one another outside of the ring (Why is Gigi interested? Well, in part, he thinks Ruo needs a true rival to improve his skills and sees the potential in Kazuki to become that rival). 

In fact, by the end of the book, not only are Kazuki and Elle pretending to be a couple (largely in attempt to help break off her engagement, although they obviously and predictably do find themselves falling for one another, too), but Kazuki has transferred to Elle and Ruo's school...and is now living with Elle...!

The art, storytelling and character designs are all typical of shojo, with all of the boys being drawn very tall (sometimes even unnaturally so, as they look overly elongated) and with pretty features, particularly the long, light-haired Ruo and dark-haired Kazuki, who is apparently so pretty that he wears a hoodie all the time to disguise his face...! (That's Kazuki on the cover above, by the way.)

Elle is, by contrast, quite short and round-faced...but not nearly as short and round as Gigi, who Takada gives the stature of a Sanrio character, seemingly half the size of Elle and seems to always be drawn in chibi style (He reminded me quite a bit of Happosai from Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2). Somewhat oddly, near the end of the book, when there's a fairly dramatic scene, he reverts to a normal size and style and is only recognizable as the same guy by his bald head and eyepatch.

The book seems to pile cliches on top of one another pretty quickly, but, as they say, cliches are cliches for a reason, and the characters and book itself seems self-aware regarding aspects of the melodrama. It also seems a little more heavily American-ized than I think we might expect from a more recent manga. For example, Elle is said to be a freshman rather than a first-year, and there's at least one exchange where it seems the translator was trying to convert something pertaining to Japanese names into something that makes sense in English.

The first volume of Punch! was, nevertheless, mostly rather light and breezy (Save for a scene in a hotel where Ruo seems intent on forcing himself on Elle, despite her protestations, until she accidentally hurts herself fighting him off and he belatedly comes to his senses). Given how short the series is, I plan to read the rest of it.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 9

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #37 (1985)

Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushynsky

•In this issue, writer Larry Hama introduces several characters and vehicles from the toy line (and, by this point, the cartoon). Most prominent among them is probably Flint, whose action figure referred to his role as "warrant officer" but who was one of the main characters in the cartoon's ensemble cast, where he played a leadership role and was romantically paired with Lady Jaye.

And then there are Tomax and Xamot, the Crimson Twins. Identical twins and circus acrobats/lawyers, they were colorful characters even by Cobra standards. On the cartoon, they generally finished one another sentences, and had the unusual (but, for the Joes, convenient) ability to feel one another's pain. They were also the leaders of the Crimson Guardsmen, although in the comics the CGs were introduced prior to them. (Their action figures, by the way, came together in a two-pack; I had these figures when I was a kid). 

•Most of the action in this issue is set at The Arbco Bros. Circus. Joes Gung-Ho, Ripcord and Blowtorch are smuggled into the circus by Bongo the balloon bear, who met in issue #33, "Celebration." Here she tells someone the soldiers are helping her with her balloon delivery given that they owe her after absconding with her vehicle previously. 

She also takes off her bear head and tells the stranger her real name is Candy, to the annoyance of Ripcord, who she wouldn't share her real name with, because he won't tell her what his is ("I told you, I can't tell you my real name--" he protests; I don't suppose he could have just made up a normal sounding name, or used his middle name or something...? Sharing his codename "Ripcord" with her sounds like a security breach in and of itself, doesn't it...?)

•By the way, this isn't mentioned in the comic, but Ripcord's real name is Wallace A. Weems, and he hails from Columbus, Ohio.

•As to why the Joes are interested in the circus, aside from the fact that "Arbco" is an anagram of "Cobra", well, they are there to investigate a meeting of the Young Executives for Community and Home (Which, yes, acronyms into YECH). They suspect correctly that the groupe is a Cobra front. 

•Tomax and Xamot aren't exactly undercover. They wear matching uniforms, each of which are mirror images of one another, with prominent Cobra sigils on their chests. Tomax sits at a card table in a tent where the YECH meeting is scheduled, while Xamot is keeping watch from the track of a roller coaster. They seem to communicate psychically with one another, talking to one another from far away in dialogue balloons distinguished by red, wavy borders. They also seem to be able to see through one another's eyes here. 

•On a nearby testing range, Lady Jaye (still spelled "Lady J") and Roadblock are piloting captured Cobra HISS tanks as part of a test of some sort of super-speedy new tank. It manages to dodge their fire, close the distance and scrap both tanks in 22 second flat. The tank in question is the Armadillo mini-tank, and it's being piloted by Flint, whom both Duke and Roadblock seem to already know. 

These panels are interesting, I think, in that Flint and Lady Jaye's romance is anything but love at first sight in the comic (It will develop pretty damn fast though, and I wonder if that was Hama belatedly following the cartoon's version of their relationship or not).

That, and because they use the words "obstreperous" and "bailiwick". Good vocabulary for the kids, Larry Hama...!

•At the circus, Ripcord and Bongo/Candy are attacked by what looks like dozens of Clark Kents in the hall of mirrors. The Clark Kents will strip off their blue striped suits to reveal red uniforms and don still not quite on-model masks and helmets to reveal themselves as Crimson Guardsmen.

•Enter another new Joe: Footloose. Wild Bill's dialogue in that last panel sounded so much like something Foghorn Leghorn might say that I imagined the cartoon rooster's voice coming out of the Joe helicopter pilot for the rest of the issue.

•Not a very flattering angle for Gung-Ho, is it...?

•In short order, Flint and Footloose in the Armadillo join the fray, forcing Tomax and Xamot to flee on another new vehicle from the toy line, this one a Cobra one: The Ferret, an ATV that holds two action figures (perfect for the Twins, then!) and has a big red gun and a couple of red missiles on it.

•Although no one is killed or even hurt, Bongo/Candy, who was already annoyed by Ripcord's secrecy before a huge action scene exploded around her at the circus, decides she doesn't want anything more to do with him. 

As Ripcord stutters "Does this mean...", she finishes his sentence for him, and proceeds to tell him off pretty good:

Goodbye? No, that's too nice! This is drop dead, don't bother to call and don't expect a Christmas card!

Ouch. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #38 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushnsky

•Warning: This is a pretty damn eventful issue. Kids sure got their seventy-five cents worth from this one. 

•We haven't heard much from Cobra Commander since it was revealed back in issue #33 that Billy, the Springfieldian child rebel who tried to assassinate him, was actually his own son. That changes with this issue, as we open with the trail of Billy! Oh, wait, actually Cobra Commander specifically says that this is an inquest and not a trial, since everyone presents saw Billy attempt to shoot the Commander and that they all know he is therefore quite guilty. Still, Destro acts as something of a prosecutor as he leads the proceedings, and the rest of Cobra high command all seem to look like they are on jury duty in this image.

•During the inquest, Major Bludd's eyepatch seems to come and go, as seen in the panel. Perhaps he's not actually missing his left eye and just wears it for affect.

•Billy refuses to name the co-conspirators who set him up to shoot the Commander—The Baroness and Major Bludd, of course—and eventually Zartan suggest they use the late Dr. Venom's brain wave scanner, which we saw way back in G.I. Joe #10, the same issue that introduced Billy. If you recall, the device allows interrogators to literally read the mind of the subject placed within it, as it translates memories to images on a TV screen. Venom had tried (and failed) to get Snake Eyes to reveal the secret location of the G.I. Joe headquarters back then.

•The Commander orders Billy to be strapped in which then leads to an intriguing sequence where we see a pre-Cobra Cobra Commander, before he started wearing masks, and we get some of the series' precious few hints towards a Cobra ideology beyond, you know, being bad guys.

As Snake Eyes before him, Billy is able to block the machine from finding the memories its operators want by dredging up alternate memories (A process that Destro explains above can cause extreme physical pain).

Here we see the man who will become the Commander in a nice office ranting to his son. His animating belief, the motivation for his terrorist enterprise seems to be that he's opposed to...big government...? Does that mean the Cobra Commander was an old-school, pre-Trump Republican? Or, perhaps, a libertarian? 

There are two things worth noting in that first flashback panel. First, Cobra Commander sure looks like he's Just Some Guy, rather than having a terrible disfigurement that he needs to hide behind masks (Likewise, he doesn't seem to be anyone famous and thus needs a mask to conceal his celebrity). Second, note the "Arbco" name on the business across the street. Apparently, it pre-dates the "Cobra" organization, and therefore it is not an anagram of "Cobra", but "Cobra" is actually an anagram of "Arbco".

The flashbacks continue on the next page, where we see a first mask-less Commander continuing to talk about the government in one panel, followed by another where he has adopted his logo and hood, the latter of which he pairs with a business suit. At the beginning of the organization, presumably before they could afford blue uniforms and helmets, Cobra followers just tied bandanas around their faces and wore armbands.

•Seeing that Billy is just using the scanner to spill tea—"This is highly classified information being bandied about!" are Cobra Commander's actual words—the Commander orders him taken out of the machine and sent to a jail cell. The Baroness and Bludd (again drawn sans eyepatch) are relieved, while Storm Shadow is impressed with Billy's integrity at refusing to reveal his co-conspirators, despite the fact that they have abandoned him. 

•In fact, Storm Shadow is so impressed that he sneaks down to Billy's cell, bloodlessly kills the two guards and frees Billy...leading to a dramatic confrontation with Destro, which Mike Zeck and John Beatty captured on the cover.

Leveling a gun at Storm Shadow, Destro tells him to give up: "Even you can't outrace a bullet!" 

Destro is underestimating a true ninja master. Moving with speedlines, Storm Shadow grabs Billy's wrist and rushes towards Destro, striking his gun arm with a "SPACK" as Destro fires, the bullet going straight into the light above and plunging the room into darkness. 

Storm Shadow is now officially on the outs with Cobra, and he never did find out who killed his uncle The Hard Master and framed him for the crime.

•So that's what Cobra is up to. But what of the Joes...? Well, they have two separate missions that begin to play out in this issue. In the fist, Gung-Ho, Ripcord, Roadblock and Stalker are sent to fictional South American country Sierra Gordo on a mission to rescue Dr. Adele Burkhart (Who the Joes had previously rescued from Cobra way back in G.I. Joe #1). As for the second, a team consisting of Duke, Blowtorch, Cover Girl, "Lady J", Snake-Eyes, Mutt and Junkyard conduct a raid on a suspected undercover Cobra agent believed to have set up the ambush at the circus in the previous issue.

•Do you think Hawk added "flat-earthers" in there as a joke, or is there really a violent, militaristic flat-earther group with political ambitions in South America...?

•The Joes' jungle trooper Recondo gets a much better, second introduction here. You may recall that he briefly appeared in issue #32, where he, Blowtorch and Clutch were shown dropping off ice cream and soda for the upcoming party celebrating the re-opening of The Pit.

Here he first appears in silhouette, telling Stalker's team, "If you're going to come tromping through my jungle like mummers on parade, you gotta cut me a little slack and breathe a little more quietly. You guys are positively deafening!" They don't recognize Recondo at first, and this leads to a tense armed standoff, in which Recondo gains the upper hand when his local allies appear.

These are The Tucaros, Recondo's "Indian friends", who say what they do best is fight and sneak up on people. 

Once everyone's on the same page, Recondo and the Tucaros lead the others to the base where Dr. Burkhart is being kept prisoner. It's an imposing, well-defended fortress built at the base of a sheer cliff. 

While Stalker and Gung-Ho speculate about how many tanks and bombers might be needed to crack it, Recondo says he thinks their small team can take it alone.

"You got a plan or are you just optimistic?" Roadblock asks. He's got a plan: They will attack by rappelling down the cliff wall, which none of the guns are even pointed at, since "no one in their right mind would even try it... ...except us!"

•The other mission, back in the states, is going poorly. The Joes meet unexpectedly stiff resistance from inside the dark suburban home, although Junkyard acquits himself nicely throughout. There are a couple of cool panels showing him charging alongside Mutt and Snake Eyes, barking or howling as he does so. In the sequence above, we see him save his teammates by spotting a tossed grenade, catching it and then dropping down the drain.

•On the final pages, we see who was defending the house, when Tomax, Xamot and a Crimson Guardsmen all come crashing through the front window on The Ferret (Hey, the box said it could hold two figures, not three!). They fire a missile directly at the Joes' transport and are thus able to make a clean getaway.

•But wait! There's still a last-page dramatic reveal...! The Joes find plenty of evidence that someone in the house was definitely an undercover Cobra agent, and just then Candy/Bongo the Balloon Bear, Ripcord's love interest, pulls up. What is she doing there? Why, that's her father's house...she lives there! Is Candy's dad a Cobra agent? Is Candy?! What a cliffhanger!

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #39 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•Speaking of cliffhangers, the next issue opens with our heroes literally hanging from a cliff, as the team on the Sierra Gordo mission rappel down the cliff face in order to sneak into the enemy fortress and rescue Dr. Burkhart. They manage to sneak in, rescue Burkhart and sneak out...almost. They're caught halfway to safety, which kicks off a big firefight. The three Tucaros, who stayed atop the cliff to pull up the Joes' ropes, save our heroes when they lay down some cover fire, but they are killed by the bad guys' snipers for doing so. 

•Meanwhile, Storm Shadow has taken Billy under his wing and begun training him. The boy seems to be a fast learner, as it can't possibly have been more than a few days that they've been together. When we first catch up with him, he and Billy are sword fighting and exchanging ninja sayings ("To triumph over fear is to triumph over death!") and then playing a chess game in their heads. I got a real superhero/sidekick vibe from the pair in this issue. Particularly in the above scene, where we see Storm Shadow has a kind of secret base inside a New York City water tower, and then they change from their ninja clothes to street clothes.

•This is kinda neat. Storm Shadow has apparently taken Billy walking around in places they are likely to meet muggers, as a test. We see what look like some middle-aged "punk" shakedown artists, and Billy manages to scare them away with the ninja art of "the dirty look." More wisdom from Storm Shadow: "The more skill you acquire, the less you have to use it" and "The only rational purpose for mastering violence is to abolish it."

Yeah, I can see why little kids in the '80s would have eaten this stuff up...

•The surviving soldiers in the Sierra Gordo bunker talk about various countries' military forces circa the 1980s after the Joes escape with Burkhart.

•After the Joes in Sierra Gordo finally get to safety, which involves a daring river crossing, they are all in a truck full of farm animals headed towards the border and a friendly airfield. During the trip, Ripcord once again expresses his feelings about the Joes risking their lives to save Burkhart, who is anti-military, and once again Stalker puts him in his place with what is some pretty pure, undiluted pro-democracy propaganda.  

It's pretty basic stuff, but damn it feels refreshing to read it in 2026, when the current U.S. government is doing so much to try to politicize the military. 

•Before the last page of the issue, in which Stalker's Sierra Gordo team get picked up by Wild Bill and Cover Girl and are told they are being flown to New Orleans, there are two one-page scenes checking in with the leaders of Cobra and the Joes. Destro and The Baroness inform Cobra Commander that Billy and Storm Shadow have gotten away and remain missing, but the Crimson Guardsman "who is instrumental to our New Orleans operation" was with Tomax and Xamot. And Duke and Lady Jaye interrogate Candy, and Duke is especially curious about her father's maps and charts of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

Interestingly, during the interrogation scene, Candy says that she finds "the international conspiracy" of Cobra "a little hard to swallow." Duke explains, "We try to keep the existence of Cobra pretty secret. We don't want to alarm the populace..."

Surely Cobra has made themselves pretty well-known by this point, no? And not wanting to alarm the populace by talking much about terrorist groups...? Well, lived through the U.S.' "Global War on Terror", that was not my experience with how our military dealt with the threat...

What's all this talk about New Orleans...? What does Cobra have planned for the Gulf...? Well, I've already read it and, trust me, it's going to be exciting...!