Amazing Spider-Man #3: Jesus fucking Christ. I was pretty close to terrified by the end of this issue, so I can only imagine how Peter felt.
The issue begins calmly enough, with MJ's boyfriend heading to Peter's apartment to get him to stop calling MJ. We hear his side of a phone conversation with MC, in which we learn that he once punched Peter. This time, he only wants to talk. Outside Peter's building, he runs into the guy who's been hassling Peter the last few issues to pay his medical bills. He's surprised to learn that Peter was hospitalized for a few months. He pays off some of Peter's debt to give him some breathing space, clearly Wells' way of letting us know that he's a good guy. That said, it's easy to forget that after the next sequence.
Spidey awakens in an abandoned subway tunnel with his hands chained to his ankles. Tombstone proceeds to beat him to a pulp. He asks Spidey why he busted up his deal with the Rose, and Spidey responds that it's simple: he's a good guy and tries to stop bad guys.
This response sets Tombstone on a long, winding discourse about lions. When a lion kills a man, scientists try to figure out why he did it. When a man kills another man, they just throw him in a cage. I'd argue Tombstone is gliding over some nuances here, but Spidey does what Tombstone wants and asks Tombstone what made him "bad."
With absentee parents, he was constantly bullied, unable to eat because his bullies stole his lunch tickets. Learning the language of the streets, he filed down his teeth and adopted his whisper, getting his bully to lean into him to hear him, allowing him to attack and bite off the kid's ear. Tombstone then justifies his descent into crime as making sure he could always eat. At the start, he's talking about needing to eat in a literal sense. Later, he's filling his larger appetites. Again, it's kind of hard to argue that living in the penthouse that we've previously seen is the same as not going hungry as a child. But I'm not chained in an abandoned subway tunnel with at least a probably broken rib, so it's easy for me to say.
Tombstone then reveals his plan. He has his men dressed as the Rose's men, and they're going to shoot up 125th St. As such, some good guy will emerge to stop the Rose. Tombstone adds that he's got Robbie Robertson inbound (as we've seen) because he's going to teach him a lesson about his son taking his daughter. (I guess he hasn't mellowed after all.)
In a twist I really didn't expect, Tombstone orders one of his men to kill Spidey. Wells does an amazing job conveying Spidey's terror as he screams, "Lonnie, stop! I've learned my lesson!" It's...a lot. Lonnie disappears as we see the guy lift the gun in the last panel.
As Nick Lowe said in his page last issue, Spidey's totally dead, right? Like, I know he isn't going to die, but, man, Wells really sells you on the idea that he may. In other words, it's a great fucking issue.
Astronaut Down #1: This series' premise is interesting, though the execution is a little clunky.
Earth is suffering from a "quantum cancer" that's killed 90 percent of the population. The remaining humans exist in 22 "barrier cities" that hold off the plague. We witness one of those cities - "Ohio City"- collapse in this issue, killing two million people in 17 minutes.
In an attempt to prevent the cancer from happening in the first place, the "NSA" has been trying to send "astronaut's" consciousnesses to other realities. Of the three astronauts we see selected in this issue, only Douglas manages to arrive in the body of an alternate version of himself. Based on comments some of the characters make, I think it's the first time that they've successfully done so.
My only complaint here is that Patrick gets a little preachy when it comes to the "Don't Look Up" overtones. Craven politicians and religious fanatics opposed addressing the cancer when it first appears in Russia, wasting valuable time that could've produced options to prevent the cancer from spreading. I'm not saying that it isn't realistic but maybe too soon? At any rate, the speechifying slows down the story that's already pretty dense with scientific jargon.
That said, I'm hoping that now that we've established the premise we'll get to focus more clearly on Douglas' mission.
Dark Beach #3: This issue is pretty straight-forward if uninspiring.
In a flashback, we watch Gordo as he quits college after his mother died. Gordo believes that she was murdered, and Duke unsuccessfully tries to convince Gordo to help him investigate her death, which Gordo dismisses as naive, that they could get to the bottom of a story the cops don't want told.
In the present, Gordo cajoles Duke into giving him the name of his Ghost Choker dealer so he can get high and try to figure out the old Sun mystery. Lily finds him in his apartment the next morning and discovers the note that Gordo originally found in Ket's apartment that sent him to her. (It was on Mayflower stationery.) She tells him "Bermuda" (which is written on the note) is a ship she and Eve used to visit at the habor. Before she can say more, Julyus the assassin arrives, so Gordo sends her to the Bermuda. Gordo manages to trap Julyus in his house and makes for the Bermuda, where he comes face-to-face with a taser-wielding Eve.
In the epilogue, the scientist from last issue stumbles upon a tentacled creature submerged in some sort of tank. Dr. Stanley arrives and informs her that it hasn't moved in 300 hundred years. It's interesting that Ruiz-Unger has added such an explicitly extraterrestrial hook to this series. I'm really unclear, the best possible way, on where we're going with it.
I'm still curious about the geography of this world. For example, Gordo goes to New St. Louis to get the Ghost Choker. He clearly doesn't go all the way from Reykjavik to St. Louis though. As such, we're obviously dealing with some sort of compressed area. But it's also clearly part of the story so I'm figuring Ruiz-Unger will reveal the truth at some point.
Marauders #3: OMG, this issue is almost incomprehensible you guys.
At some point in the past, the Kin Crimson tried to assassinate Xavier while Cassandra was in control of him. I don't recall knowing that Cassandra controlled Xavier during the period he was residing with Lilandra or the Kin Crimson tried to assassinate him. But, I have bigger fish to fry. During the attempt, Cassandra conveniently learned of the Shi'ar's Ten Shames as well as the Kin Crimson's Chronicle.
With the mysterious book that Kate received confirming Cassandra's stories, Xandra declares that she's going to read the Chronicle. Delphos objects, and Xandra attacks her. Telling Gladiator to imprison Delphos as a traitor, Xandra announces that she pulled the location of the Chronicle from Delphos' mind: a "pan-dimensional prison" named the Krag. But Delphos already warned the other Kin Crimson members, so the Krag guards open fire on Xandra when she and the Marauders arrive.
It sounds straight-forward, but it isn't. It's a confusing mess of mumbo-jumbo. I like where Orlando is going plot-wise, particularly with the revelation that the criminally underused Fraternity of Raptors' leadership has remained in the prison for generations. But I'd really like to see this narrative flow more easily than it does here. Moreover, the Marauders are essentially tertiary characters, which isn't great for a book in theory about them.
Past the Last Mountain #4: As expected, this issue is brutal.
Kate awakens in the Dragon Lake Medical Center and, once released, finds Simon and Willa, who's seething that Dragon Lake isn't human-free as promised. Even Kate is surprised at Willa's attitude, noting the magical creatures walking freely among the humans. Their case worker, Sue, arrives and starts processing their refugee paperwork. When Sue mentions off-hand that she can help them get jobs, Kate expresses shock that magical creatures live and work side-by-side with humans. When Willa says that they don't want to live with humans, Sue informs them that they don't have to do so: they can head for the Rockies with the other free magical creatures. When Simon expresses fear of Goblins in the mountains, Sue tells him not to worry: they killed all the Goblins.
At this point, Willa loses her mind. She asks when the humans will deem them enough of a "clear and present threat," like the Goblins, to commit genocide. Sue somewhat understandably notes just how dangerous Goblins are/were. But, it's too late. Willa takes to the skies and attacks Calgary. The Canadians try to take her in peacefully (because of course they do), but eventually the Defense Minister (a Griffin) orders her killed. In the aftermath, we learn that Neil is facing federal charges of insubordination, and the Canadians drop off Kate and Simon at the Rockies.
If the main story is brutal, the "Orc Girl" back-up story is even more so. It expands on a seemingly throwaway comment Sue made in the main story, about an Orc who became an attorney in the 19th century.
It turns out said Orc as a boy was swept down the river when trying to keep his more adventurous sister safe after she built a raft. A group of humans pull him from the river on the other side. Because humans and Orcs had an agreement to stay on their own sides of the river, the Orcs decline to go rescue him. Devastated, his sister spends her childhood building a bridge across the river to get him. She fails to complete the bridge, however, as life takes her along its path.
Now a married woman, she discovers a token that reminds her of her brother, and she goes to find him. Leaping from the bridge to the other bank, she makes her way through the human town, where she's stunned to see her brother dressed in a suit at happy hour with his colleagues. She attacks him and flees, furious that he got the adventure that she wanted and that he never returned for her. (The last part is pretty dickish, to be honest.) The story ends with her destroying the bridge she built to get to him.
This series has really been a deep dive into hate and mistrust. Allor didn't make it cut-and-dry: not all humans hate magical creatures, and not all magical creatures hate humans. He could've taken the easy road and told a story where difficult situations make people resort to their racial biases. Willa is a great example of that, where her mistrust of humans dooms her. When Canada couldn't promise a perfect world, she became the monster she claimed the humans were. If you spend some time on Twitter, you know how accurately Allor nailed the current moment in which our society finds itself. But Kate manages not to take this road, a remind that Willa (and people like her) make a choice to lose themselves in hate and mistrust.
Star Wars #24: Zahra is too good a character to take off the table permanently, so Soule gives himself a secret door here, as Leia leaves Zahra for a creature to eat. I usually roll my eyes at that sort of ending, but Soule makes the creature sufficiently fearsome that you can reasonably conclude Zahra died if she doesn't turn up somewhere else one day. If so, Leia gets justice - not revenge, as she tells Zahra - by ensuring Zahra died forgotten and ignoble. Zahra thought that she was going to kill Leia and demoralize the Rebellion. Instead, Vader will only see her failure, stopping short of her goal of destroying the entire Rebel Fleet. Soule makes sure to contrast the consequences of Zahra's insistence on hogging all the glory with Leia surviving because Chewie and Kes were there to help her. With Zahra defeated, the Rebellion can now focus on resuming its war on the Empire.
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