Friday, December 20, 2024

Seven-Month-Old Comics!: The May 15 Top-Shelf Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

G.I. Joe:  A Real American Hero #306:  This issue is basically just walking us through the various evil-doer plots and counter-plots.

Zartan manages to trick Serpentor Khan's heat seeking missile into destroying his Swamp Speeder without him on it and knows enough about how the world works to know that the M.A.R.S emblem on the missile's shrapnel means Destro is definitely not the person trying to kill him.  

On Cobra Island, Khan is frustrated by the lack of a confirmed hit on Zartan but delights over the enhanced cyborgs Revanche is producing.  

At Destro's castle, one of his aides approaches him and whispers that Zartan (who's speaking to Destro at that moment) is a simulacrum.  At that moment, "Zartan" is trying to convince Destro to join forced to take on Cobra Commander in Springfield.  The Baroness goes to kill "Zartan," but Destro stops her.  Correctly deducing Serpentor Khan is behind the ruse, Destro decides to use "Zartan" to feed misinformation to Serpentor.  

In Springfield, Cobra guards open fire on Dawn's parents's car after a patrolman stops them from leaving town.  (They shoot because Dawn's mother tells the patrolman she's going for their papers in the glove compartment, and the patrolman — probably correctly — surmises she's going for a gun.)

At Revanche HQ in Jersey, a Blue Ninja confirms to Alpha-001 that they found Serpentor's extra chip on ones of the cyborgs.  They then reprogrammed the latest shipment of chips to add a Revanche override to Serpent's chip.

A group of Joes (Wet-Suit, Helix, Multo, and Muskrat) quietly arrive on Cobra Island.

Finally, in the Bayou, Zartan informs the Dreadnoks someone tried to kill him, and Ripper suggests they set up an alliance with Destro.

Napalm Lullaby #3:  I'm trying to like this one, but Remender isn't making it easy.

Glokor's Citadel of Heaven is basically an upscale mall, where everyone there mindlessly pursues conformism and vanity.  Sarah dubs it "moral fascism," as they willingly refuse to consider any viewpoints other than their own and, as such, are all complicit in "our decline...so long as it keeps them comfortable."  As an empath, Sam is overwhelmed by this extreme level of egotism and begins to lose control over his ability not to set things on fire.

An angel exposits the basic framework on how Heaven works:  you climb the pyramid's 30 levels to cleanse your soul of the "filth of Kestuul," who "used science to control us" and gave us "hedonism, lust, depravity, barbarism, abortion, homosexuality, greed, pollution, and war."  The Leader later informs the pilgrims that they have to recruit 100 souls for baptism for their "ultimate salvation."

An angel sniffs out a "sindicator," but it isn't Sam, it's a would-be terrorist planning on detonating himself.  (How did he get into the Citadel?)  But the guards manage to cover him in some sort of plasma that restrains the blast, igniting only the would-be bomber.  

Another angel eventually identifies Sam, Sarah, and their father, who tries to get them to leave.  Sarah resists and starts to say something about making it all this way.  She doesn't get to finish that thought because the Janitor incinerates her father, whom she calls Xander.  Also, the Janitor may be their mother.

It's hard to tell here how exactly Glokor's religion works.  If I'm guessing correctly, the Citadel began with a certain number of rich people living there.  They now form the Citadel's elites, and the pilgrims have to bring in the people for their Ponzi scheme to work.

At any rate, I'm not really buying any of it, so I'm getting off this train here.

Redcoat #2:  This series is definitely the Ghost Machine launch that I could see myself abandoning soon.  I mentioned last issue that Simon isn't particularly likable, but after this issue I have to admit that he isn't particularly interesting, either.

The melee that began last issue continues here, as Simon and Einstein fight off the cultists.  One of them manages to hit Simon with an axe etched with symbols, though Simon shrugs off the attack.  As he narrates the battle, Simon tells us that it's the first time he's engaged with the cultists since he became immortal in 1776 and that he's only aware of one other immortal besides himself.  He assesses this group of cultists as young and not ageless making him wonder what they want with him.  But, given it's Simon, he doesn't wonder too much and bolts, leaving Einstein to follow.

As they walk through Boston Simon tries to lose Einstein, though suddenly a blue flare of energy emits from his wound, knocking them both off their feet.  Einstein tells him that he won't heal from this wound as easily as he usually does, saying that he and everyone else in the United States are in danger.

On a train to New York, Einstein explains how his sister, Maja, had visions of "glowing men and metal soldiers and an immortal mercenary in a red coat."  Maja predicts a ritual gone wrong will leave America "burning from coast to coast."  These visions came while Einstein was in a phase where he was actively trying to prove "spiritualists, magicians, and fortune tellers" wrong given his newfound belief in science.  However, Maja correctly predicts a fire in their father's workshop and other visions come to pass.  After their parents don't believe her, Maja sends Einstein to find Simon.

Simon isn't really buying what Einstein is selling but agrees to travel with him to find the one person he knows who might be able to answer the questions Einstein raises.  The wound lets off energy again on a train, and Einstein says that he thinks Simon's condition will get worse because the cultists knew that only Simon can stop them.  They arrive in New York and head to the mansion of the founder of the "so-called Society of Patriarchs" as he's throwing a lavish Gilded Age party.  The founder is Simon's fellow immortal, Benedict Arnold.  

Although they're rivals, Benedict also seems to take care of Simon, for reasons Johns doesn't explain.  Benedict sends Simon and Einstein into his study so he can finish dancing with J.P. Morgan's daughter (smart, Benny) and enters just as Simon suffers another burst of energy from the wound.  As he does, Simon has a vision of fire spreading from sea to sea as Maja did.  Benedict recognizes the axe as the Axe of Lies and informs Simon that he'll be dead (for realsies) in three days.

The Weatherman, Vol. 3 #5:  [Breathes.]

I don't know what to say here.  Every issue of this series manages to top the previous one.  I opened this issue with trepidation, scared of the things LeHeup planned for characters I love.  I was correct.  It was brutal.

We begin with Burga's staff figuring out a way get around Zane jamming their transmission so she can get out a message to the Martian people that the Sword of God has acquired a second sample of the biophagus and, unless a "small tactical force of elite Arcadian operatives" stop it, Mars will go the way of Earth and Venus.  As Burga tells everyone to go to their loved ones and make their peace, Cross, the Marshal, and White Light arrive at the facility, with a furious looking Ian and Jenner looking down at them from the top of the wall.

Cross blows open the gates and sends White Light to disable the hypergate and the Marshal to destroy the power source.  When the Marshal asks where she's going, she says simply, "Don't wait for me," and the three of them silently go their separate ways.

White Light encounters Molly, and their battle is brutal.  Molly uses a grenade to throw White Light into a set of pipes, but White Light uses her electric knife to set the chemicals leaking from the pipe on fire, thus setting Molly on fire.  At this point, we learn Molly is mostly metal as her still-burning self emerges from the fire like Arnold in "Terminator."

Cross arrives in one of Alice's labs but hears an explosion outside the doors.  She sees the Marshal with his back unknowingly to the fire (which I think is from the blast that White Light caused) and shouts a warning to him just as a huge tank explodes.  The Marshal manages to jump to safety, but the floor collapses under him.  He finds himself on the floor below that one, face-to-face with the power source...and Jenner.  Cross scrambles to get to the Marshal, but Ian appears and slams her into the ground.  Notably, Cross calls him Nathan, not Ian.

Molly is on a full tear after White Light, opening fire on her.  White Light uses a steel plate to deflect the bullets only for Molly to use her chainsaw arm to cut the plate in half.  Spewing a flame thrower, Molly corners White Light, who manages to hurdle over Molly and collapse a door frame on her, buying White Light a few minutes.

Jenner calls the Marshal by his name —Komatsu Michio — and asks if he's there to bring him to justice.  The Marshal says justice has nothing to do with it, and Jenner simply says, "Of course.  Revenge.  Are they not one and the same?"  The Marshal then tells him he's always talked too much and attacks with his katana.

Upstairs, Amanda tells Ian that she doesn't want to hurt him, and he wordlessly pummels her.  After grabbing her electric knife, he kicks her off the platform onto a lower one and leaps in the air, knife above his head, missing Cross only when she manages to roll to her side.  She then tells him that she definitely wants to hurt him now.

Molly hunts White Light, telling her women should support other women in the workplace (ha!) as she arrives at a magnetron (or some other large device with magnets).  Seeing White Light in the control room, Molly tries to bolt, but White Light activates the device, ripping all the metal off her body.  Appalled by Molly's remains of a body, White Light puts her hand to her mouth, only for Molly to sign, "Thank you," before dying.  Oof.

At the power source, Jenner tells the Marshal that family made him soft.  He tells him that he was a credit to the ORCA program and asks if he knew why they ended the program.  The Marshal manages to shoot out part of the ceiling above Jenner, seemingly killing him.  But Jenner emerges covered in the biophagus, stating, "I happened."  

Jenner reveals the "the suits found a way to splice [his] DNA with the healing properties of the virus" to "build a better murderer."  Jenner then rips off the Marshal's cybernetic arms and —pasted over a flashback of him killing everyone in the lab that made him what he is — impales the Marshal with his cyberblade arm.  He then hands the Marshal the locket from last issue as the facility's PA announces, "Maximum energy output exceeded."  The Marshal looks at the pictures in the locket and, in a flashback, sees a beautiful woman at the beach with her boy playing with a bucket in the surf behind her.  He then dies.

You guys.  Not the Marshal.  I can't.

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