Comics I Bought Today: November 11, 2015

Why?  Because I can.

Let me know what you liked here, or what you think I missed:

Absolutely could not find a full-cover version for Secret Wars 7 or Ultimates 1.

RECAP, I GUESS: The Walking Dead, S06E04, “Here’s Not Here”

This episode is not worthy of a recap.  It wasn’t bad, necessarily, it’s just that nothing that happens in it is anything we didn’t know already.

WHAT WE KNEW BEFORE: Morgan met a dude who converted him from the half-crazy killer he was in “Clear” into the calm, life-preserving Aikido master we see in the most recent season.

WHAT WE KNOW NOW:  Morgan met a dude who converted him from the half-crazy killer he was in “Clear” into the calm, life-preserving Aikido master we see in the most recent season.  That guy had a goat.

Here is the goat:

I am a goat. I die at the end.

I like goats. I would have liked this goat more had, at any point, it made any of these noises:

Sadly, it does not.  It does screech at one point, because zombies are trying to eat it, but Morgan saves it.

So, yeah.  Morgan’s all I CLEAR NOW, SO EVERYBODY DIES, including a couple of normal humans who just, like, get in his way for a second so he kills them both, and he’s being all crazy and burning bodies, and he finds this guy’s house, and this guy locks him up, and then it turns out that the locked door was never locked and Morgan coulda just walked out of his prison at any time, and that’s a metaphor for Morgan’s mental state, and oh let’s learn Aikido, and the dude who played Eastman should have been played by J.K. Simmons because this guy is totally J.K. Simmons with about 20 pounds of Aikido master vegans in the zombie apocalypse shouldn’t be pudgy where did that come from added on him.

And eventually one of the people Morgan killed but apparently did not prevent from rising attacks him, and Morgan freezes up for some reason so dude kills the zombie and the zombie literally bites him in the love handles, making this easily the dumbest death the show’s had in a while, and then the goat’s dead too, and it turns out Morgan has been telling this story to the tied-up Wolf he didn’t kill in the other episode the whole time, so I guess Chekhov’s getting another chance.

Here is the most funny and/or interesting thing about this show:

Ignore the meme; this is the only picture I could get of the shirt.  That’s Eastman.  HIs name is “Eastman.”

Lennie James was trained in how to fight by the same guy who did the fight choreography for Donatello in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

One of the guys who created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is Kevin Eastman.

And here Eastman is, wearing a shirt referencing turtles.

Ha!  I get references!

Here’s another picture, included only to show just how ridiculous the place where this dude manages to get bitten is, plus Lennie James is all being a ninja and stuff:

Here’s the thing: I don’t actually mind a Morgan-centered episode at all, and I’m genuinely not terribly concerned about whether Glenn’s dead or not if I’m being honest.  I can wait another week.  I’m actually expecting to not find out for two weeks, because I betcha tomorrow’s episode is entirely Alexandria-centered and we don’t find out a single thing about Glenn one way or another.  But this episode was so one-and-done that… shit, these guys are both great actors, so maybe give them an episode that matters somehow?  Because this one doesn’t.  You’ve missed nothing if you skipped it, and that sucks.  Leave Eastman alive!  He’s interesting!  He and Morgan have great chemistry!  Why bother killing him off, especially in a really dumb way?

I think if they’d let the guy live, I might be more inclined to agree with the people who really liked this episode, and I found at least one reviewer who thinks it’s the best episode the show’s ever done, although that guy’s take on the rest of this season is sorta booty.  I can’t agree with either of them, because there’s nothing new here and nothing changes.  And that’s a shame, given how good the two actors are who had to carry this ep.

The worst thing?  We never find out about the peanut butter protein bar.  I really am going to have to go back and watch “Clear” again to see if Michonne steals that damn protein bar.

Is it next Sunday yet?

RECAP: The Walking Dead, S06E03, “Thank You”

Man, this has been an amazing season so far, but this is probably going to be my shortest recap ever, because a whole lot of stuff happens but really nothing happens.  Here’s the tl;dr version:  We go back to the group that was herding the Walkers in the first episode.  Everyone from Alexandria dies, except for Heath and another new black (!!!) guy whose name I don’t recall.  And Glenn dies.  Sorta.  Maybe.  Probably?

Uh, spoiler alert.  You don’t still need spoiler alerts for these things, do you?

A couple quick bullet points and then we’ll get into the important bits:

• Basically everyone spends the episode trying to redirect the herd and get back to Alexandria.  There’s a lot of splitting up and a whole lot of people get killed.
• This episode maybe coulda had some more mercy shots, because all but one of the Alexandrians who get killed by zombies get torn to shreds.  There was one guy who Michonne really could have sworded to the head and she just let him get eaten.
• Rick injures his hand, which could be leading to something but probably nah, since we’ve already seen one survivor get cut by a knife covered in zombie blood and nothing happened.
• Amazingly, other than Rick and Abraham, Sasha, and Daryl, who don’t really have anything to do, the only people who definitively survive the episode are Michonne, Heath, and the other Alexandrian, who is also black.  He’s got a bullet in the leg but he’s alive.
• Every single time I write one of these I have to double check to see how many Rs are in Daryl.  You’d think I’d know by now.
• There’s more than a few teleporting zombies, where Alexandrians are safe one second and getting munched on by a zed nobody saw a second later.
• At the end, Rick has killed off five Wolves, including the one who stole the gun (great job there, Chekhov) and found some baby food in one’s pocket.  So, uh, there’s really only one place nearby where he might have found baby food, and Rick’s kinda frantic about it, except oops the Winnebago he’s in won’t start because Winnebagos don’t do that and also he’s completely surrounded by zombies now.
• Seriously, that’s not Dale’s Winnebago, right?  Where’s Dale’s Winnebago?

Okay.  Yeah.  On to Glenn.  This happens:

They’re cornered, standing on a dumpster, and note that there’s a barbed-wire fence behind them.  Nick’s about to shoot himself in the head.  Then he’s gonna fall off the dumpster, only because Nick really can’t ever do anything right he’s gonna take Glenn with him, and he’s gonna fall on top of Glenn.  And then this happens.  This image is a little more gruesome than what I usually post but I feel like it’s kinda necessary:

And then this happens:

My theory: Glenn is alive.  And that’s bullshit, because Glenn should be dead, but next week is a 90-minute Morgan episode and they are sure as hell trying to capitalize on tension and Glenn should be dead.

In bullet points:

• Remember, Nicholas fell on top of Glenn.  We never get a clear shot of him other than the one above, where he appears to be crying more than he appears to be in pain. 
• Also, it appears that his intestines are being pulled out of his chest, which is kinda weird.
• Glenn was not listed in the “In Memoriam” portion of The Talking Dead after the show.
• Steven Yeun was not present on The Talking Dead after the show, and they always bring major cast members on after they die.
• Glenn rather incongruously calls Rick “Dumbass” at one point over the radio.  When was the last time Glenn called Rick a dumbass?  When Rick was hiding under the tank in the first episode.
• Steven Yeun has been photographed in costume and on set since this episode was filmed.  Granted, flashbacks are possible.
• Nicholas died too, meaning that no surviving cast member saw Glenn die. Which is not how this show rolls.  They couldn’t leave Beth just missing and it led to the worst storyline in the show’s history; there’s no way they’re gonna leave Glenn’s death ambiguous, and I don’t see his reanimated body making it out of that mob to conveniently walk past a cast member.  Nobody alive even knows where he is.
• Glenn’s death in the comic books was one of the biggest deals the series has ever done, and while I’ve always felt that moment had a good chance of being given to Daryl, it’s surprising that they’d kill him off so ignominiously when they’ve been teasing us with baseball bats for two seasons.
• There is also a fan theory that the whole bit is a hallucination, because supposedly Nicholas has already fired his gun dry before shooting himself in the head.  I don’t buy this theory but I’m mentioning it for completion’s sake.

So, basically, the theory goes that he’s gonna roll under that dumpster, and that he’s already covered in blood and guts (don’t they have to be walker guts?) or maybe he’s gonna pull one under with him or something and somehow he’s gonna survive.  I mean, on the one hand, it’s Glenn.  Dude once killed a zombie while tied to a chair.  Glenn is the best survivalist on the show, hands down.  If anybody can get out of this, it’s him, and I like the character a lot, and I want him to be alive, but… yeah.

Next week, Morgan becomes a Ninja Turtle.  The week after that, zombies attack Alexandria, so I’m betting it’s at least three episodes from now before we find out what happened.

So… uh… is it November 15 yet?

Comic reviewlets: KARNAK #1 and CLEAN ROOM #1

This isn’t an installment of my semi-regular sci-fi comics series, although they’re both science fictional enough for my blood.  But two books came out last week that I feel like folks ought to take a look at, and I have the feeling both of them have the potential to be overlooked.

KARNAK #1, by Warren Ellis, Gerardo Zaffino, and Dan Brown

Karnak is billed as an ongoing, although if I know Warren Ellis he’ll likely only be helming the book for the first six to twelve issues.  I intend to mentally treat it as a miniseries until I know more about his plans.  I know next to nothing about the Inhumans, and I didn’t know Karnak was even a character until this book was announced, so I’m coming at this from a position of almost total ignorance.  That said, the first issue intrigues.

The book begins with a call from something called the Infernal Device.  One of Karnak’s monks– he has monks– comes to get him.  The Infernal Device is in here:

…and it turns out to be a phone.  Right away, you realize Warren Ellis is writing the book, which should probably tell you right away whether you’re reading this or not.  Karnak’s deal is that he can instantly see the flaw in anything: philosophies, objects, systems, people… everything.  It makes his abilities both hard to define and extremely versatile.  He splits a bullet in half with his bare hand at one point.  Also, this happens:

The plot itself is pretty thin: Karnak is hired, through S.H.I.E.L.D., to find a young man who has been exposed to the Terrigen mists and captured by an offshoot of AIM called IDIC.  The genius of this book is the atmosphere; you already have an idea of the color palette and the general tone, and the book is remarkably sparse with words– I’d say half the book has less than one dialogue bubble per page, and there are at least half a dozen with no dialogue or text at all.  It’s well worth checking out, if you’d let it slip by.

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CLEAN ROOM #1, by Gail Simone and Jon Davis-Hunt

This one’s definitely an ongoing, and since it’s a Vertigo title not called Hellblazer one assumes it will be written by Gail Simone until it gets cancelled or she decides to end it.  The book starts off in Germany, probably but not definitely in the past, where a red-headed little girl (who is never named) is run over by a truck driver who doesn’t seem entirely in control of himself while he’s doing it.  When she wakes up, she asks her mother where her daddy is, and when Mom points out that Daddy’s in the room with them, she asks why Daddy’s face is made of snakes.

So we start off lighthearted and cozy, is what I’m saying.

I’ll be honest: KARNAK is pretty straightforward, if a story told in an interesting way.  I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in CLEAN ROOM, but I know I like it.  The rest of the book is a journalist trying to track down Astrid Mueller, author of a book with no punctuation that supposedly either reveals the secrets of the universe to you or drives you insane.  And if you’re catching echoes of THE KING IN YELLOW… well, I doubt that’s a mistake.  

Her name is Chloe Pierce, and ever since her boyfriend blew his head off soon after reading the book, she’s been searching for answers.  She survives a suicide attempt at the beginning of her part of the story, and by the end of it she’s confronting Astrid Mueller, who is red-headed and has a German last name.  Hmmm…

Like I said, I have no idea where it’s going, really, but the book’s overall vibe is creepy as hell and Gail Simone is always great.  So check it out.