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.

Seven-Month-Old Comics!: The April 10 Top-Shelf Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Napalm Lullaby #2:  This issue is a lot better than the first one, so I'm happy to say I'm going to hang in here.  That said, Remender spends most of this issue laying breadcrumbs for paths whose ends we won't find for a while.

We begin with Sam telling Sarah that, when they defeat the Magnificent Leader, they should seriously consider her using her powers to re-create the world in their image.  (Sarah's powers are more clearly - if still vaguely - defined here as allowing her to dream things into reality.)  Sarah repeats aphorisms that Sam ascribes to their father, like "Reject all moral authority" and "Fear all moral authority.  Especially your own."  Sam makes the point that a new world order will happen whether they like it or not once they take down the Leader so why not make it one they want?

They arrive at home, which is essentially a museum of high and low culture:  Renaissance paintings and the Venus de Milo stand beside a C-3PO statue and Marilyn Monroe bust.  Sam and Sarah continue arguing, with Sam saying that people are too stupid to make up their own minds.  (Remender certainly wrote this series with the election in mind.)

Ordering Sam to make dinner, Sarah enters their father's study.  He immediately asks if she found any relics, and she simply responds that dinner'll be ready soon.  At the table, their father harps on Sarah about how she didn't find a relic, and, when Sam enters with dinner, he asks Sam if he found any relics.  When Sam says he didn't, their father asks what they we were doing all day.

They confess that they got three haloports to undertake the pilgrimage to the Crystal Temple and inform him that they're taking him with them.  Their father is outraged, but Sam says they know "she's" been in touch with him:  they found letters from inside the dome pleading with him to bring Sam and Sarah to her.  (I'm assuming it's their mother.)

But it's clearly not that simple.  Their father is obviously hiding them from the Leader, noting that they're the only ones (meaning, clearly, people with powers) that "the Janitor hasn't cleaned up yet."  He accuses Sarah of wanting to end the world, and Sarah shoots back that he's hiding in a mausoleum "preserving a dead world."  Sam takes up the cause, accusing their father of hiding.  He then uses his powers to set the room full of relics on fire, prompting a smack from their father.  Sam tells their father that saving the relics won't bring back the past and dares him to help them fix the future.

Later, Sam and Sarah talk on the rooftop, and it's clear the plan is to get Sarah inside the Palace so she use her powers (which is why it ups the difficulty given they only have one sedative pen).  Sam comments that they have to hope she doesn't have a nightmare this time, and Sarah says it won't be like when...something happened.  (I'm guessing it's when they lost their mother.)

The next day, they depart, and their father is with them.  They're all dressed in white robes, and he warns the kids to think only positive thoughts in the Citadel of the Devout, as it's swarming with the Sin Police who can read their intentions.  In this conversation, we learn their father previously lived inside the Citadel and the religion believes that the real Jesus is "an alien named Glokor."  (Hi, Scientology!)

At the gates, the guard scans Sam's face and haloport.  He realizes the haloports are for level-five clerics, which Sam and Sarah are too young to be.  Sam then uses his powers to convince them to let them into the Citadel.  Upon entering, I'll note that the images of the Leader look not totally unlike their father...

Star Wars:  Darth Vader #45:  This issue isn't terrible, though Pryde's annoyingly persistent devotion to Vader makes it clear that he's going to die ignominiously in Vader's service at some point.  

In this issue, Vader brings the Schism Imperial to Tython to raid the Martyrium of Frozen Tears, an enormous kyberite confessional the Jedi built.  Vader orders the Schism to strip the kyberite and use it to shield a ship, which'll clearly play a role in his plot against the Emperor.  But the interesting part is that Vader witnesses Luke's confession, where he wonders if he made a mistake not taking up Vader on his offer to rule the galaxy with him.  That's interesting, and I'm here for us exploring that.

Unfortunately, most of this issue is Pryde expressing disbelief that the rest of the Schism doesn't love Vader the way he does and the rest of the Schism telling him he's an idiot.  [Sigh.]  It is what it is.

Transformers #7:  "Transformers" is absolutely the best series on the stands right now.

On Cybertron, at an unspecified time, Elita-1 leads Huffer, Kup, and Warpath to a fortress where an unnamed Transformer is.  However, they're suddenly ambushed.  Kup questions Elita's plan to traverse a long expanse without cover while they're under active fire, but she brooks no dissent, as they have to make it to the fortress.

Kup orders Huffer to use his shield to cover them as they break for the fortress, but the shields eventually fail and, in a brutal scene where Corona really shines, Huffer gets blown to pieces.  (I should note here that Corona taking over the art is seamless.  I don't know how he mimicked Johnson's work so effectively, but I only realized it was a different artist when I looked at the credits page.)  Kup and Warpath return fire, and Warpath is also blown to bits.  Kup orders Elita to "Save him!" as a sniper blasts off the side of his face.  Elita kicks her way into the fortress to find a disassembled Transformer there.

On Earth, the Pentagon directs the U.S.S. Henry Harrison to Washington as Soundwave challenges Starscream for the leadership in the Decepticon's base, which appears to be inside a volcano.  Soundwave tells the assembled Decepticons that they should be conquerors, the "ones that enslave."  Instead, "barely functioning Autobots and their weakling humans" keep winning.  Rumble starts to say Megatron would make it right, and Starscream backhands him, telling him "Nobody wants to hear from the pipsqueaks."  Soundwave tells him that he's wrong, that they've all sacrificed for the goal of exterminating the Autobots.  But Starscream has failed as leader, and he has to surrender.

Starscream tries to stall, saying Soundwave is a traitor, but Thundercracker interrupts, saying that it's their way that he has to fight off the challenger.  Panicked, Starscream tries to stall again but Soundwave brutally attacks him.  Under onslaught, Starscream offers Soundwave a "co-leadership model," but Soundwave beats him to a pulp.  He ejects Laserbeak who — as Starscream screams, "That's cheatin--" — pecks out Starscream's eye.  Starscream offers to forgive Soundwave's betrayal but Soundwave grabs him and, saying, "You kicked my Ravage.", rips out his stomach and throws him into the lava.

This entire sequence is amazing.  Again, Johnson has the Transformers exhibit emotions in a way I've never seen before.  Thundercracker still seems emotional over Skywarp's death when he intervenes on Soundwave's behalf, and Soundwave's comment about Ravage is dripping with hatred.  Plus, Corona's art is spectacular.  He really conveys these emotions so well:  you can see the hatred driving Soundwave's attacks.  When we get to the battle's final panel, with Soundwave standing over the lava saying, "Good-bye, Starscream," it's an emotional release for all of us.

Holding the pieces he ripped from Starscream's stomach, Soundwave announces these pieces will heal Ravage.  But he pledges not to heal just his own (an interesting turn of phrase regarding his relationship to the cassettes) but to rebuild together.  Asking the Decepticons if they're with him, Thundercracker takes the lead in getting everyone to kneel and scream Soundwave's name.  Again, the art is great, particularly with a pleased looking Laserbeak sitting on Soundwave's shoulder.

At the Ark, Arcee observes Carly training with a rifle.  Carly delights when Arcee misjudges her gun's power and blows up Carly's targets.  Arcee says that Optimus calls her the best shot he's ever seen but she wishes she wasn't so good at it.  Carly says she should revel in it, that it'll help kill Starscream.  But Arcee cautions Carly to watch that the fire she sees inside her doesn't consume her.  It's clear Arcee is speaking from experience, but Carly dismisses her.

Arcee then tells Carly about her teacher, Ultra Magnus, who saved Arcee when her clan was killed during the Siege of Cybertron.  She was young, and he taught her everything she knows.  Alluding to events we haven't yet seen, Arcee says she wanted justice for her people, and Ultra Magnus died because of her "path of hate."  She warns Carly that it takes more than it heals, and Carly simply fires the rifle again and says, "Cool story."  (I'm guessing the robot Elita saves in the fortress is Ultra Magnus.)

In the Ark, Cliffjumper laments how furious Carly is at him for not killing Starscream, and Jazz tells him that Optimus is having the same problem.  We move to the hospital, where Spike is sitting in a wheelchair with Optimus, who asks him to talk to him.  Spike tells Optimus that it isn't his fault, he just needs time.  As they drive to the Ark, Ratchet reminds Optimus that it was Sparky's choice, and Optimus laments Spike losing his family so young as he suddenly has a memory of holding Spike as a baby.

At the Ark, Wheeljack tells Arcee, Cliffjumper, and Jazz that he accidentally revived part of Skywarp's neural cortex.  As such, Skywarp is locking out Wheeljack from the systems, so it's slowing down the repairs.  Wheeljack says that it's only part of Skywarp - "they fried him pretty good" - and Skywarp responds, "Eat.  My.  Vapor.  Auto.  Bast--.", and Wheeljack disconnects him.

Optimus and Ratchet arrive, and Optimus tells Wheeljack they need to find the Decepticons.  Wheeljack says they need someone to get them a "bird's-eye view," and Optimus says he has a plan, looking on the disassembled Autobots.

Again, this issue was just a joy from start to finish.  If you aren't reading this series, I feel sorry for you!

Eight-Month-Old Comics!: The March 13 Top-Shelf Edition - Part One (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Napalm Lullaby #1:  I love Rick Remender, but, oof, this issue is a lot, even for me.

A couple named Paul and Brenda are leading a rally in Norfolk, Nebraska.  Around sunset, they send the participants home and themselves head home in their pickup truck.  Given the cross hanging in the truck's rear-view mirror, it seems like Brenda is talking about God and/or Jesus when she tells Paul that they need to enforce "his" will.  Before they can finish that discussion, however, a light appears, and they crash into a tree.  

From a portal, a leonine robot emerges with futuristic troops in pursuit.  After the troops take down the robot, one of them refers to it as the "last of the Mechawombs."  They open the robot and discover a baby in a nest, Kal-El style, inside its chest cavity; they then argue over who's going to kill the baby.  Before they can, the baby's glowing eyes explode, eliminating the troops.  Paul and Brenda approach the baby and bring it into their car, with Paul telling Brenda that "he" heard her prayers.  As Brenda cuddles the baby, she says that "he" answered them, and we learn that "he" is an entity named "Glokor." 

Fifty years later, a brute that looks like the X-Men's Caliban murders three priests and steals the halos that hover over their heads.  As he walks through a slum, a beggar on "pilgrimage to the Crystal Temple" asks him for "protein."  A man at Old Nan's Funhouse calls him "Hork the Penniless," and Hork passes the wheelchair-ridden Nan on his way to a room.

He enters an Olympus-inspired garden, where a woman named Rose meets him.  Hork warns Rose about entering (presumably the Palace) with "dead priest haloports," predicting she'll be in one of the "straightening camps" by morning.  Agreeing that a deal is a deal, Rose strips down and begins to have sex with him, but the hologram is interrupted when someone pounds on the door.

It becomes clear that Hork and Rose are in cyberspace as the man banging on the door in reality enters the room.   The man wears a habuki-inspired mask, and Rose later calls him Sam.  Rose herself is dressed in black and white, with an all-black visor.  She warns Sam that he can't wake her like so abruptly, and Sam says that he couldn't "feel" Hork's lust any longer.  Hork pulls a knife to attack Rose, and Sam launches a pick-like object into Hork's head, mortally wounding him.  (He was aiming for his arm.). However, Sam is emotionally connected to Hork as he slowly dies, and, calling Rose "Sarah," asks her to sedate him.  Sarah is furious at him, since they're low on sedatives, but complies.

At that point, Nan and the doorman enter, and she orders the doorman to swipe the haloports.  Sarah asks Sam for the pen that dispenses the sedatives as they flee the doorman, who corners them quickly.  Sam offers him the haloports, but the doorman stomps Sam's head instead.  Sarah leaps for the gun that fires the pick-like objects, but the doorman breaks her back over his knee before she can grab it.  The doorman returns to Nan's and gives her the bag with the haloports, and she exposits that she'll finally make the pilgrimage with them.

Meanwhile, Sam and Sarah are alive, escaping on a motorcycle with a sidecar.  If I'm following correctly, the sedative they used while fleeing the doorman allowed Sarah to create the illusion that the doorman killed them and swiped the haloports, so they're trying to escape before he and Nan realize the truth, that they still have them.  Sarah is concerned that they only have one dose of sedative left, but sam tells them that it doesn't matter since the gates are only open a little while longer.  As Bandal gives us a view of the city, full with the spectacular Palace and smaller gates, Sam opines, "How do you prepare to kill a god?"

Having just read "Mistborn:  The Final Empire," I'm guessing that we're facing a similar story, particularly given Remender's backmatter treatise.  However, Remember doesn't quite deliver the same excitement as he did in "The Sacrificers" #1.  Although we were also dropped in media res in that issue, the emotions that Pigeon and his family felt about his impending sacrifice grabbed you by the lapels.  Here, we're given little insight into any of the characters, watching them mostly responding to external events.  I'm happy to hang in here, but I think we need some better focus in the next few issues to make this story as gripping as Remender's other series.

No/One #8:  At this point, I'm hard pressed to see how Higgins and Buccellato are going to wrap up this story in two issues, given it just got even more complicated.

Three weeks after Gill slipping capture, the cops still can't find him.  Chief Mixon correctly points out Gill was working service industry jobs and likely didn't have the resources to evade capture this long without help.  Before the meeting adjourns, Singh tells Mixon the Ledger "has the story" about the .38 Special; Mixon thanks Singh for the heads-up and comments that he'll warn Ben.

At a coffee shop, Teddy approaches Julia to tell her that he meant what he said on the podcast — about how he hadn't intended to hang out Julia to dry but acknowledges that he did so all the same.  Julia thanks him, but, before they discuss the podcast, their phones buzz.  At Ledger HQ, they learn Ben Kern's training officer, Jack Sherman, used the .38 Special 35 years earlier to shoot and kill a kid named Daryl Graves.  In the series of news clips that fill the next two pages, Graves' parents say their son never owned a gun and a salesman says he sold Sherman the gun.

Later, at a diner, Sherman meets Ben and leaps across the table to make sure he wasn't wearing a wire.  Sherman accuses Ben of telling people what they did, and Ben says he only ever told his wife.  Sherman wisely notes Aaron could've overheard him, and Ben tells Sherman he accepts the consequences for their actions, namely that Sherman shot an unarmed kid and they lied about it.  Meanwhile, outside the diner, the Weiss Macht Brotherhood (WMB) are preparing to go after Ben.  (They're also demanding the authorities nullify the convictions they won based on Ben's infiltration of the group.)  Of course, Chobsky is with them.

Despite how badly it ended with Ben, Sherman calls him to warn him the WMD is outside the diner.  Revealing he's holding a gun, Ben tells Sherman that he plans to face them.  (At Major Crimes, Singh gets a call — likely from Sherman — that the WMB have pinned down Ben.)  As the WMB approaches Ben, No/One arrives and knocks off a guy on a motorcycle charging at Ben.  Ben jumps in No/One's car, and No/One berates him while evading the pursuing WMB bikers.  Ben swears he's already dead, and No/One tells him to find purpose in finding someone who needs help, saying, "You of all people should know that!"

Two days later, Ben calls Julia and promises to tell her everything about the gun.  First, though, he goes to Chuck's and tells him to tell him everything he remembers about Clarity because, in his words, he needs to know "if there's someone still waiting for her to come home."

OK, let's get down to brass tacks.

First, as Julia notes, both Harrison Gill and Aaron Kern used the .38 Special.  In his conversation with Sherman, Ben hypothesizes that either Aaron and Gill were working together or Gill got his hands on the gun somehow after the cops arrest Aaron.  In other words, it underscores that we really have no one what connections exist among the Accountability Killer(s), including the two Copycats we never mention.

Second, Ben's visit to Chuck implies that he thinks that the Clarity connection is more important than we've seen so far.  That makes sense, though you have to wonder why the Killer(s) didn't go after Coach Cade first in that case.  That said, given the (s) at the end of Killer(s), it isn't clear which killer might have the connection.  Is it Aaron?  Is it Harrison?  Is it one of the two Copycats?  Is it No/One?  It's possible that No/One's motivation for exposing corruption was the fact he knew people covered up Charity's death.  Or did Aaron or Gill or the Copycats get involved because they have a connection to Charity that we haven't yet seen?

Third, we still don't even have a hint about No/One's connection to the Killer(s).  All we know is that No/One started the campaign with his data drops but isn't (in theory) responsible for the Killer(s) starting to off people.  I think we're supposed to believe that No/One adopted his costumed identity to take responsibility for his actions.  In other words, he was initially content with the drops but took on the identity to stop the Killers from reverting his work.  But I don't think Higgins and Buccellato have even made that clear.

Finally, it's getting to hard to believe there is a connection here.  I'm worried it's going to feel hand-wavy at the end, like all the "victims" were members of the same BDSM club or something.

The podcast doesn't really shed much more light on the issue other than Ben publicly confirming that Sherman shot the kid, which Sherman denies in a preemptive press conference.  (I was figuring he was going to pin blame on Ben, which he doesn't here though may later.)  Notably, Julia is on the podcast, so we're all friends again, it seems.

In other words, as I said before, we have a lot to go with only two issues left.

The One Hand #2:  It's apparently murder mystery week this week!

The issue opens with Ari visiting an informant, Juice, after he (Juice) witnessed a murder.  Juice tells Ari that he watched some clubbers beat up a kid and douse him with paint thinner.  When the kid shut down completely, they got annoyed and set him on fire.  Juice can't get over the fact the kid just stood there and let them burn him alive; as Ari is leaving, Juice reveals the kid kept saying, over and over again, "Can't get out."

At the precinct, Ari is upset when the person answering the phone at the brothel doesn't know who Nemone is.  He ends the call, and Mac approaches his desk.  Mac tells Ari the Department has "the new guy from crypto" working on the cipher, though Ari views it as a waste of time.  As they're leaving the precinct to interview last issue's victim's next of kin, Ari is served papers as the District Attorney is reviewing his conviction of the previous One Hand Killer.

At the victim's house, the victim's wife is somewhat ambivalent about his death, telling the detectives that he was an unremarkable man who you could forget was there.  She explains she only went on a date with him because she spilled a drink on him.  Ari looks around the room and sees one of the ciphers in the way a set of photos are arranged.  (It's unclear if we're supposed to conclude the Killer actually uses items close to the victims as inspiration for the ciphers or if Ari just sees the case everywhere.)  

As Ari and Mac are leaving, Ari asks the widow if she loved the victim.  She slams the door in their faces.  Mac is annoyed at Ari, but Ari makes the point the Killer might  be targeting the people who live in the gaps in society.

Along those lines, Ari heads to the brothel, and the maintenance guy tells him they overhauled the operation the previous day.  He brings Ari to storage, but Ari doesn't find Nemone there.  Instead, he finds flyers for a lady who runs a gallery and comes to the brothel for parts.

Ari heads to the Marker-Vaugn Art Gallery, where a decadent party is in full swing.  A drunk man accosts Ari after he recognizes him from the papers, and Ari starts to leave but notices a faceless person in the crowd seemingly with a sixth finger.  Ari tries to follow him, but security has him to leave since he's causing a disturbance.  When he exits the building, the skyline is green, the result of a chemical truck that overturned.  He returns a call from Mac who informs him they have another case.  Mac comments that he feels like he stepped into a "murder room" as a rookie and "can't get out."

I'm definitely down with Ram V is going here.  Plenty of cop stories deal with people on the margins, since they're easy victims.  But it feels like Ram V is making the point that more of us are in those gaps than we think, that really only the movers and shakers matter.  I'm not sure how that's going to play into the mystery, but it feels relevant at this point.

Also Read:  Star Wars:  Darth Vader #44