COMICS: Dave's Other Rant: RepGod,KBAC,IronMan,Peach,Galaxion

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Other Rant:

Replacement God and Other Stories #5 "Image Is Nothing"
Astro City v2 #13 "Turning Over A New Belief"
Iron Man v3 #4 "Maison Stark"
The Desert Peach #27 "Ein Anfang"
Galaxion #6 "First Contact, First Blood"

I also got Cerebus and Scud: Tales from the Vending Machine, but will
only be doing Capsules of them. Spoilers....

Replacement God: Yet another Image import exports himself. This is the
last semi-hemi-demi-monthly (every 6 weeks) issue from Image, Zander's
setting his studio up as a self-publishing gig and going quarterly starting
with #6, which will be 80 pages (later quarterly issues will be 48 pages).
The point of this is to avoid the problems he's had lately with not having
enough space to advance the main story sufficiently in a single issue. With
twice the pagecount, hopefully even a relaxed pace will give a decent amount
of "meat" each issue.
Perhaps as part of gearing up for that change, this issue is pretty low
on meat, with two lettercols (last issue's missing lettercol is included) and
a bunch of nifty pencils-only sketchbook pages (interesting to note that his
uninked pencils are nearly as stark and high-contrast as his inked pages).
The main story segment has two foci. The first, and longer bit focuses on
Walamir, the Goth who ditched out on death and became a ghost back in the
Slave Labor issues after Anne killed him. He's not really dead, but he's not
really alive, and something's keeping him from his rest. He's not a god, but
he's not a man either. He's become some sort of revenant, out to avenge
himself on Ursus (who sent him into this mess) and on the Guild, who he has a
vision of as they kill his people. The other focus is on Knute, who ends up
stumbling into and surrendering to Thuidmir. But things have changed
drastically while the hunt was on...will the Goth leader turn Knute over to
Ursus?
The Knute's Escapes piece had some hilarious bits with wind...I was
reading this on the bus on my way to get Galaxion, Peach and Scud (Diamond
didn't ship them to my regular shop, and I figured if I waited until Friday
they'd be gone...given that I got the last or second last copy of each, I was
right) I was laughing out loud as the cock crowed...and then was blown across
town. And then the baby. Hee!
Side note to Zander and anyone else who read the lettercol and doesn't
know who Harold Lloyd is (since one reader compared the Zander-guard to
Lloyd). Lloyd was a major silent film star who was famous for daring stunts
in his comedy. He's the guy who originally hung from the hands of a clock in
the movies...he did a lot of high-up-type stunts (many of which were actually
not that high, thanks to perspective tricks).

Astro City "In The Spotlight": Somehow, this issue failed to grab me.
Oh, it was good, and had its interesting bits, especially filling in many of
the gaps in Astro City's history which heretofore had only been guessed at by
us, but for whatever reason, I didn't really get into the story.
Loony Leo's a cartoon character who was brought to life by an evil
genius's invention, a miscalculation, and a Tinkerbell-ish scene where the
Gentleman got people to believe in Leo so he wouldn't fade once the invention
was smashed. He was a huge star, then his star faded and he went on to sink
deeper and deeper until a scandal with a minor dying in his apartment turned
him into a homeless bum...and then into a supervillain. In recent days,
things had turned around some, with his part-ownership in the Loony Leo's
Restaurant, but he's still a dissatisfied, immortal shell of what he once
was. He relates his story to a young adman to try and explain why the guy
doesn't want Leo for his ads, but ends up signing on. Only time will tell if
he turns around or just suffers another fall.
The pathos is there, but it didn't really take hold. Maybe I'm not in
the right frame of mind for it, maybe it just didn't work out the way Busiek
wanted.

Iron Man "Trouble In Paradise": I have to wonder if Kurt's been having
trouble with his web browsers lately, since the big product Stark-Fujikawa's
launching at the opening of the issue is an uberbrowser. Personally, I don't
like my browser to seek out downloads on its own, so I probably wouldn't use
the Stark program. }->
In Major Subplot land, Tony finally finds out about the Happy/Pepper
divorce, and Kurt deftly uses past continuity of the characters (such as
Happy's rotating careers) as part of the reason the couple separated.
Happy's feelings of inadequacy over his career moves led him to alienate
Pepper, who then suspected him of an affair, and he was feeling hurt enough
to let her think that. So she retaliated (BAD move) by having her own
affair, with an old friend of Happy's. Things just got worse from there.
And now Happy's willing to forgive and reconcile, but Pepper (according to
him) feels too guilty over her role in things to let it go. Ten to one she'd
be happy to forgive, but thinks Happy's too proud to let it go. This is the
sort of thing Tony'd find out once he gets out of the current mess, and might
lead to him getting the two back together...but it could also lead to a major
conscience problem. Y'see, he has the memories of his HR life, and in that
he was romantically involved with Pepper a lot more recently than the
mainstream Tony and Pepper dated. He might entertain notions of moving in on
Pepper, then immediately feel like a total heel.
Speaking of the current mess, the software unveiling is taking place on
Monserrat, er, Isla Suerte, and it gets attacked by the new Firebrand, who
seems to share the original's anti-capitalist rhetoric but not much of
Gilbert's brains. Making things more fun is that the island gets cut off
from the outside world, and both Rhodey and Sunset Bain are on the island.
As is a new supporting character, Rumiko Fujikawa, who acts the part of
airheaded Japanese party girl, but is cool under fire and quite intelligent.
She's also a walking pun, since she's wearing a Maison Ikkoku shirt (Maison
is a series created by Rumiko Takahashi, who also created Ranma, Lum and a
horny, er, hoary host of others).
One thing I liked about the execution of this conflict was that despite
Iron Man's best efforts, Firebrand still managed to almost totally level the
island's structures in his first attack. The death count was kept down, but
Firebrand has a devastating power, and it appropriately devastated the
island. On his encore, he manages to ignite the "extinct" volcano...boom,
instant Montserrat. BTW, it must not have really been extinct, since that
means that there's no longer even any pressure to force lava up through it.
When it's possible to come back to life, they call it dormant.
Chen continues to do a good job on the art (although I have trouble
taking his chubby Firebrand totally seriously), and I especially liked the
trick he did making the panels of a sailboard sail into story panels.

Desert Peach: While I haven't reviewed this title before, I *have* read
almost the entire series (still need to borrow #25) as borrowed from a
friend. So I figured it was time to start buying my own issues, yes?
Although I made sure I wasn't taking the last issue on the shelf, since the
friend I borrow from gets it off the shelf himself.
Anyway, this issue may be six dollars, but you get your money's worth.
It took me about 45 minutes or so to read it, and I get through most comics
in under 10 minutes. It clocks in at 60 pages of comic, but Donna Barr packs
about 120 pages of story into those 60 pages.
If you've never read the Desert Peach before, but are curious about it,
this is a good place to start. It's an origin story of sorts, and it fills
in enough background on every character who appears that new readers won't be
lost. And for extra fun, there's a summary of all the issues to date at the
back (although it could use some proofreading).
Now, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, the Desert Peach is the
fictional brother of Erwin Rommel (the Desert Fox), Pfirsch. Pfirsch is gay,
which isn't easy in the German army of WWII. Of course, most of his unit is
similarly misfit in nature, various "stray puppies" as one new puppy puts it
in another issue. But above and beyond his sexuality, Pfirsch is a
thoroughly decent man, and being a decent man in the Nazi-dominated German
Army is even harder than simply being gay. A good part of the series
involves the lengths Pfirsch goes to in order to do the right thing and
maintain a little human dignity in the face of a degrading war.
There is nudity and the occasional sexual situation, plus foul language
(mainly in German, and Barr leaves the really nasty stuff untranslated a lot
of the time), so I'd recommend only mature readers pick this up (plus, you
may need to look on the tittie-rack for this title, it's not likely to be out
on the shelf with innocent books like, oh, Transmetropolitan). Of course, a
good deal of this will be self-selection. Immature readers probably wouldn't
be interested anyway. }->
Now for an obligatory bit of obscure speculation. Hints are dropped
about Pfirsch's training officer in WWI which make me wonder if Pfirsch and
Stinz (another Barr comic) had the same training officer? Not impossible,
especially since trainers tended to stay trainers in WWI because they weren't
fit for frontline duty (until the very end, when everyone was thrown into the
gap).

Galaxion "Communications": Oh my God, they killed Patty! You bastards!
Sob. Well, I can hold out hope that the spear missed any vital organs and
Patty's just a captive of these heathen, gibberish-speaking, flan-eating
natives.
When I glanced at the Dramatis Personae on the inside front cover, I
tsked. Right there on the page was a member of the Hiawatha crew, way to
blow the surprise in the Mighty Marvel Manner. So the approaching people
were Hiawatha crew, okay.
Bzzzzt. Not Hiawatha. They're the Miesti, whoever that is. Something
to be explained next issue. They speak a totally alien language, despite the
otherwise totally parallel nature of this Earth. And they're not friendly,
at least not the group which shows up to investigate. Not friendly to the
point of killing Patty and injuring Vessa before the team can scarper. And
thanks to First Contact rules, they're stuck onplanet. Wild speculation: the
Miesti are pod people or possession victims, aliens having taken over some
years back. Okay, maybe not.
The locals aren't all nasty, though, as it turns out a hidden splinter
group is working with the Hiawatha survivors, down in the subway tunnels.
Running over all of the events of this issue is Aria's internal
monologue about how the excitement of first contact during her childhood
inspired her to join TerSA, and how it changed from exciting to deadly...and
then to murderous on this mission. Death to accident was one thing, death
because the natives were trying to kill you was something she wasn't prepared
for.
Artistically, at first I was a little annoyed at the incoherence of the
fight scene, until I realized that was exactly what Tara was shooting for,
and it worked. A chaotic swirling mess interrupted by a stark moment of pain
and possibly death.
There's another bit in the art which makes me wonder if my aliens theory
is actually so far-fetched. The Miesti don't seem to have pupils...what
little we see of their eyes is blank. And just before the attack, Patty's
eyes started to blank out and she turned off the shield. Unless she totally
flaked (and, flaky as she may act, I find that unlikely), something took over
her mind. Okay, after she's speared she doesn't have any vital signs that
Scavina can detect, but that may be a side effect of the possession.
Oh, and I have the back cover quote, yay!

Dave Van Domelen, "Nur zu, Maedl!" - Pfirsch's "devil conscience,"
saying "You go, girl!" in German.