The Threshold

Some good comics this week – and we’ll get to that – but did any of the others have Fin Fang Foom? No. No, they did not, so there are spoilers ahead for…

Thor #6
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Christian Ward
Cover: Esad Ribic
Rated T+
$3.99
Marvel

“The Starbrand, the Iron Fist, the Spirit of Vengeance.The Sorcerer Supreme. Doom is all these things. In addition to being Doom.”

In the days before the dawn of the Marvel Age of Comics, the company that would launch that era was primarily known for monster comics, featuring dangerous, gigantic creatures such as Xemnu, Glop, and a certain bit of alien flora known as Groot.

Many of them would eventually find their way into the Marvel Universe that sprung up after the introduction of the Fantastic Four – some of them, like Groot, would be redeemed after their initial villainous appearances, and make their way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe – and more were introduced throughout the years.

That fondness for monsters is built into Marvel Comics – indeed, one of the flagship characters of the Marvel Age of Comics is a hulking, green-skinned monsters – and the monsters even have their own island.

Of all the monsters in Marveldom, though, my all-time favorite is Fin Fang Foom. I can’t say why, exactly, but I’ve always had a fondness for the giant, alliteratively-named dragon who wears purple trunks. I used to joke about getting a Red Dragon-style full back tattoo like Frances Dolarhyde’s, except, of course, the dragon would be FFF.

After all, did William Blake’s Great Red Dragon ever do this?

With that’s said, let’s get to the issue at hand, in which we see the latest installment of a tale involving King Thor at the end of time. The last time I mentioned King Thor, he was off in search of confirmation of his suspicion that the moribund universe was not just dying but already dead, and during his travels he encountered an old friend and comrade-in-arms, the former Wolverine, now in possession – or possessed by – the Phoenix Force.

As is inevitable, given that heroes fighting heroes is as hardwired into the Marvel Universe as monsters are, the two got into a bit of a scuffle. Old Man Phoenix, it seems, didn’t appreciate Thor restoring life to Earth, as it’s time for the lights to finish going out, and also because the act would draw the attention of a certain someone whose attention no one wants.

On Earth, meanwhile, we witness the arrival of some of the remaining monsters, including FFF, but they don’t represent the real danger, as those monsters are in service of the greatest monster of all: the man called Doom.

In what had, countless eons ago, been Latveria, Doom looks upon the garden that Thor planted there, and does not at all approve of what the All-Father has done with the place. Two mortals are there to greet the strange visitor, and though they live in an idyllic, pastoral world free from want and injustice, they know evil when the see it, particularly when the evil they’re seeing starts burning everything down.

The two men begin throwing rocks and pitchforks at Doom, though they have, of course, no effect. Thor’s granddaughters arrive just in time to get the two men to safety, and as we had already learned that one of the men is named Adam, we learn the name of the other in a gag that made me laugh out loud when I read it:

The girls don’t present much of a challenge to Doom, but fortunately, King Thor and Old Man Phoenix talked/punched out their differences and arrive in time to take over the fight, leaving the girls free to deal with the other monsters bedeviling the planet.

Doom proves too much for the two, however, and after apparently dispatching Old Man Phoenix, Doom turns the Penance Stare on Thor, forcing him to relive all the pain he has caused throughout his very, very long life.

Old Man Phoenix is not completely out of the game yet, however, and he realizes that just as Doom has consolidated all of the powers mentioned in the opening quote, the solution is to do the same with the power of Thor and the power of the Phoenix. Finally bringing his own seemingly-endless existence to an end, Logan places the Phoenix Force into Thor’s hammer, and the All-Father rises to once again face Doom.

After Thor takes the battle underground, we get something of a montage showing that the fight rages on for generations, but, even as the Earth shakes and rumbles, and volcanoes constantly erupt, and there is the ever-present sound of battle everywhere that there are ears to hear it, life goes on, until the day that Thor, exhausted to the point of death, finally emerges from a river of lava and declares that it is finished.

As Thor dies, the Phoenix moves on to a new host, a little girl standing nearby, and declares that the true darkness is on its way.

One of the more significant storylines in Aaron’s run has been Thor’s fight against Gorr the God Butcher. It was a storyline that introduced the King Thor future, and showed us a great deal of Thor’s pre-Mjolnir past, and that led, ultimately, to the period during which Jane Foster took on the mantle of God of Thunder.

While Gorr was ultimately defeated, the evil, powerful weapon he wielded – All-Black, the Necrosword – could not be destroyed. King Thor used it to defend Earth from the appetites of Galactus, and with the Necrosword in his possession, Galactus transitioned from being the Devourer of Worlds to the Butcher of Worlds, until ultimately he made a losing attempt at butchering Ego, the Living Planet, who then became possessed by the evil of All-Black and transformed into Ego, the Necroplanet, taking on the task of butchering other worlds.

While all of the main action was happening with King Thor and his granddaughters, somewhere out in the vastness of space another battle was raging between Ego and…a worm? Yes, a tiny little worm was crawling around somewhere on and in Ego, taunting the Necroworld, and challenging the mighty planet to do its best to destroy the worm.

As King Thor’s battle with Doom ended, so too did the battle between Ego – a world now in tatters, having nearly destroyed itself in its vain attempts at crushing a single worm – and the war came to an end, with the worm obtaining the prize it had sought for so long: the Necrosword.

And, of course we know just who that worm was, don’t we?

Next issue will find us moving in something of the opposite direction, with an adventure featuring Young Thor before we return to the present and the ongoing War of the Realms, which, like the the King Thor stories are always a fun little interlude. The King Thor stories are particularly fun, as they tend to provide some hints about things that are yet-to-come for present-day Thor. We’ve seen it already with King Thor missing his arm and wearing the Destroyer’s arm as a replacement, which played out a while back with the current Thor, and we also see that, like his father, King Thor is missing an eye. Perhaps most notable is is the fact that King Thor’s hammer looks very much like the now-destroyed Mjolnir.

We’ll see whether or not we return to the future to find out how it all ends now that King Thor is gone and Necro-Loki is ascendant, but while this was a somewhat somber story about sacrifice and inevitability, it was a fun little break from the present-day story, with great art by guest artist Christian Ward, some interesting versions of known characters, and some hints of what is to come. And, of course, Fin Fang Foom!

What Else Ya Got?

Showcase Saturday is gone – and was never well-known enough to even be forgotten – but on the off-chance that anyone is interested in what the rest of the week’s haul was like, here’s a simple list:

East of West #39

Lucifer #1

New Challengers #6

Red Sonja #22

Recommended Reading

Monsters!

That does it for the Spotlight for this week. Be sure to come back next week to see what it shines upon.

As always, special thanks go out to Comic Logic Books & Artwork, my Local Comic Shop. Remember to support your LCS (find one here, if you don’t already have one).

Even though it may not feel like there is a reason to do so right now, supporting OpenDoor Comics is a thing you can do, by whitelisting the site in your ad blocker, by purchasing something from the Supply Closet or the OpenDoor Comics Shop, by creating your own comics on the OpenDoor Comics platform, or through directly giving money via Patreon or PayPal.

Wanting to focus on something more lighthearted and fun means there are spoilers ahead for…

Adventures of the Super Sons #3
Writer: Peter J. Tomasi
Artist: Carlo Barberi
Cover: Dan Mora
Rated T
$3.99
DC

“Shut up, Robin!”

I mentioned a while back that I have plans for a very special™ Spotlight post. This week would have been a good time to spring that one on the world, as there was nothing in my stack – nothing that I finished reading in time, at any rate – that I felt a particularly strong compulsion to write about.

This isn’t a criticism of what I bought. Everything that I read was fine, but there just wasn’t anything that “spoke” to me and said, “Hey, devote a Spotlight post to talking me up!” or that shared some commonality with the current state of things for me or felt otherwise relatable*, so it would have been a good time to dive into the Archives and write that very special™ post.

Unfortunately, there are some other things I need to finish before I can write it, and life just isn’t providing me with the time and energy to get those things finished, what with the day job and the commute just eating up as much of both as it can get its hands on.

And of course, I have to have that day job to pay the bills (and buy the comics) because this site doesn’t bring in enough money to cover the cost of its own existence, let alone the cost of mine.

I guess the site just doesn’t “drive traffic,” because people don’t “click the links”, because the content “isn’t engaging,” and is “not interesting,” and is “not very good,” and the platform “offers no compelling advantages,” and while I’m “thankful” to the “twenty six or so people” who are likely to “look at this post,” I need to remember that “nobody cares,” and I should just “give up” and leave this sort of thing to the people who “know what they’re doing” and are “actually good at this,” and also I shouldn’t “use dated references.”

Wait, that took a turn. Lighthearted and fun, remember?

Let’s just check in and see what the boys are up to, shall we?

After the cancellation of Super Sons, I was surprised to see that a new title launched so quickly, even as a limited series, particularly given that Jon is currently on a cosmic road trip with his mom and his grandpa – or, rather, as has been revealed recently, just his grandpa, apparently. That latter bit led to a fakeout on the first page of the first issue, which featured a full-page image of Jon declaring that he was back. Turning the page, however, revealed that he was “back” from getting ice cream, and an editorial note indicated that the events in this story take place before National Periodicals’ Interstellar Vacation.

This issue opens with the boys imprisoned on a spaceship, captives of some alien kids who call themselves “The Gang.”

The members of The Gang are from a rigidly-ordered society where their only escape from the routine of their lives was observing broadcasts received from Earth, with a focus on the adventures of the heroes and, more to the point, villains that populate that distant backwater planet. Led by the evil Rex Luthor, The Gang has modeled themselves after some of Earth’s villains, taking on identities such as the Shaggy Boy, Kid Deadshot, and, more significantly to the state of the Super Sons as the issue opens, Joker Jr.

It seems that Joker Jr. didn’t choose the homicidal clown life so much as the homicidal clown life chose him. Or rather, Rex chose it for him, using the power of peer pressure to get him to join The Gang. But Joker Jr. wanted out, and towards that end, he helped Robin escape captivity and led him to where Jon was being held prisoner with a device that can simulate the effects of kryptonite.

The issue opens with the not-quite heroic Joker Jr. bravely running away in an escape pod, rationalizing that he’s done all that he can to help, and that even if Robin and Superboy don’t survive, at least he got away.

Or so he thinks, right up until a laser beam fired from a distance by Kid Deadshot cuts his ship in half and he’s sent hurtling unprotected out into the empty vacuum.

Back on the ship, Robin’s attempt at setting Superboy free had an unexpected side-effect. In attempting to change the frequency of the radiation the kryptonite device was generating, Robin accidently switched it from green kryptonite radiation to red.

This leads to an homage to a classic Superman story that was itself an homage to a classic Superman story.

The two Superboys don’t get along especially well, though their existence does throw Rex’s plans – which mostly consisted of killing someone just to make their bones as villains – out of whack, and ultimately does the same to the ship as the conflict onboard ends up taking out the navigation system.

Meanwhile, out in the vastness of space, Joker Jr. isn’t quite dead yet, and manages to activate some sort of force field/invisible spacesuit, just in time for some mysterious passerby to offer him a lift.

With the out-of-control ship about to make a crash-landing on The Gang’s home planet, Rex takes off in an escape pod, and Robin commands the two Superboys – who have been bickering over Blue’s taunting assertion that Red likes Ice Princess, the juvenile equivalent of Captain Cold – to evacuate everyone from the ship, but the two put their differences aside to execute a different plan, stabilizing the ship from the outsides to bring it in for a less catastrophic landing.

Unfortunately, being split in two seems to have halved Superboy’s powers, and Blue gets caught I the wake of the reverse thrusters that Robin fired to assist with the landing and appears to be dying as a result.

Before Robin can use the kryptonite device to try to reverse the effects of the split and restore a single Jon to health, Rex and The Gang show up and destroy it.

All is not quite lost, however, as Joker Jr. and his mysterious rescuer, an obscure character from DC’s past, arrive on the scene.

This was a fun little issue, in large part because of the instant dislike that Red and Blue took to each other, and how their attempts at insulting each other really don’t pan out, given that they are each other. It’s a true case of “I know you are, but what am I?”

And, of course, he was telling on himself when he made fun of Red for liking Ice Princess.

Robin, albeit lacking a certain sense of self-awareness, sums things up pretty nicely.

The art has a good storytelling flow, which is impressive, given the story’s frenetic nature, and the slightly cartoony style is a good fit. I particularly like the design on the kid versions of the villains.

Like a said, it was a fun little issue, and there’s value in having fun.

Recommended Reading

There’s plenty of Super Sons material out there. And it’s fun!

That does it for the Spotlight for this week. Be sure to come back next week to see what it shines upon.

As always, special thanks go out to Comic Logic Books & Artwork, my Local Comic Shop. Remember to support your LCS (find one here, if you don’t already have one).

Even though it may not feel like there is a reason to do so right now, supporting OpenDoor Comics is a thing you can do, by whitelisting the site in your ad blocker, by purchasing something from the Supply Closet or the OpenDoor Comics Shop, by creating your own comics on the OpenDoor Comics platform, or through directly giving money via Patreon or PayPal.

*I mean, the two halves of Superboy not getting along is pretty relatable, but I didn’t really want to go down the path of exploring my sense of self-loathing.

One of the greatest pages in the history of comics means that there no escape from the spoilers ahead for…

Mister Miracle #11
Writer: Tom King
Artist: Mitch Gerads
Cover: Nick Derrington
Variant Cover: Mitch Gerads
Rated M
$3.99
DC 

“Never underestimate the power of a good veggie tray.”

I considered shining the Spotlight on Thor this week, as the story of the ancient King Thor fighting the Phoenix-possessed Old Man Logan in the far future, with the latter annoyed at the former for bringing back the spark of life on Earth in a dying universe that he wishes would just get on with the dying already, or Buffy, which marked the end of the Dark Horse era, the license is moving on to another as-yet undisclosed publisher.

After all, given that it’s the only remaining Bonus from the days of the long-lost Weigh In, I was going to write at least a little bit about Mister Miracle anyway.

However, none of those other comics has this…

…which earned the full attention of the Spotlight.

On its own, the page is simply great, but it’s that this is in many ways a pivotal scene that ties in directly to the stories denouement and flows naturally from everything that has come before – of course Scott brought a veggie tray to Apokolips, because that’s the sort of thing we’ve learned that Scott does – that makes it so much more than it already is.

Our story begins with Scott and Barda making their preparations for their journey to Apokolips to finalize a peace agreement between the gods, and as is characteristic of this series, that larger-than-life premise is presented in the mundane scenes of ensuring that they’ve packed enough diapers and haven’t forgotten anything that are a familiar experience for any new parents taking a trip.

With teething ring, and stuff Batman, and, of course, the veggie tray in tow, they arrive in the throne room of the silent and impassive Darkseid to make the exchange. DeSaad does all the talking, and he suspects that Scott and Barda are up to something, but there’s nothing to be done other than complete the transfer of custody.

Barda hands little Jacob over to his grandfather, and Darkseid, through DeSaad, calls for the immediate withdrawal of his troops.

There remains only the small matter of the Anti-Life Equation, the knowledge of which would allow Darkseid to assume control over all living beings.

A mere detail.

Being knowledge, it’s not actually something that Darkseid can give up, but in order to effectively put knowledge into practice Darkseid requires the beams of the Omega Effect, which he releases from his eyes.

And you know what the Bible says to do if an eye offends thee..

With that out of the way, all that’s left is for Scott to say goodbye to his son.

“So don’t think about this, buddy. Don’t remember it. Just kind of know…that your father. That I… I love you, Jacob Free.”

This is, of course, part of the escape plan, and Barda busts out a weapon hidden in the bottom of Jacob’s stroller that she hopes will ensure that Darkseid isn’t.

That doesn’t go so well.

I won’t  spoil the ending to this issue, but I will mention that there is a prophecy that states that Darkseid can only be killed by his son. While the assumption has always been that this refers to Orion, throughout the series there has been some question about who the real son of Darkseid is. Biologically, of course, it was Orion, but Orion was raised by Highfather on New Genesis, while Scott was raised on Apokolips. There’s also the small matter of Orion being dead.

The ending here kind of dodges that question, in a very clever way, but also provides something of an answer to the other question that has arisen throughout the story so far: Where and how does this story fit?

As we – and poor Mitch – finally escape from the prison of the uniform nine-panel grid in which we’ve been trapped so long and find ourselves in the wide-open world of a double-page spread, we learn at last that the answer to the where part, apparently, is that…it kind of doesn’t? But in terms of the how part, it might.

“See how it’s done in the next complete issue!”

I will add that, like any good mystery story, KIng has played fair with the reader. While there are surprises contained herein, all of them fit with what we have seen, and nothing comes out of left field.

Beyond simply singling out the comic I enjoy the most in a given week, part of what motivates me in making my Spotlight selection is whether there’s any sort of connecting theme between a given story and the state of my life. This week, I suppose, the theme was looking for a way out. An escape.

Unfortunately, I’m not the world’s greatest escape artist. I don’t really have a position anywhere on any list of great escape artists, so I take what I can get in the form of escapism.

Some people doubt the value of escapism, and sniff haughtily at the very idea of it having any value. Neil Gaiman tells a great story about that value, one which I won’t attempt to – poorly – retell here, but in many ways Mister Miracle brings that story to mind, as Gaiman’s uplifting tale of escape is mired in the horrific details of that from which escape was essential.

But we need those details. We need to have that understanding.

As much as Mister Miracle is an exploration of trauma and its effects, an allegory of escaping from those personal demons, it’s also a super-hero comic book.

It’s pure escapism of the highest sort.

Yes, it’s dark, and often horrifying. It has to be, because what we’re up against is dark and horrifying.

Darkseid is.

Depression is.

Anxiety is.

PTSD is.

Familial dysfunction is.

Sometimes the best approach to facing big problems is to break them down into smaller components. Into, say, nine panels distributed upon a page.

And sometimes the best approach is to make the problems bigger, to turn them into immensely powerful evil gods who mean to rob you of your hope. To make the mundane into the mythic.

Or, as this book so often does, make the mythic into the mundane.

That all of these approaches are taken in various ways – and that it works – is the miracle at the core of this miraculous series, and as we approach the end, I realize that the impact it’s had on me is one that I can’t escape.

Recommended Reading

If you’re not reading stuff by Tom King, and don’t realize by now that I’m always going to recommend that you do so, I don’t know what else to tell you.

That does it for the Spotlight for this week. Be sure to come back next week to see what it shines upon.

As always, special thanks go out to Comic Logic Books & Artwork, my Local Comic Shop. Remember to support your LCS (find one here, if you don’t already have one).

Even though it may not feel like there is a reason to do so right now, supporting OpenDoor Comics is a thing you can do, by whitelisting the site in your ad blocker, by purchasing something from the Supply Closet or the OpenDoor Comics Shop, by creating your own comics on the OpenDoor Comics platform, or through directly giving money via Patreon or PayPal.

Repeat to yourself, “It’s just a comic; I should really just relax,” because there are spoilers ahead for…

Mystery Science Theater 3000 #1
Writer: Joel Hodgson, Harold Buchholz, Matt McGinnis, Mary Robinson, Seth Robinson, Sharyl Volpe
Artist: Todd Nauck, Mike Manley
Cover: Todd Nauck
$3.99
Dark Horse

TURN DOWN YOUR LIGHTS (Where applicable)

If you’ve ever read one of my Spotlight Sunday posts, you know that there’s bound to be some rambling anecdote about my youth that is connected – often loosely – to the subject of the post before I ever get around to writing about the subject, and you won’t be surprised to learn that this post is no exception, particularly given that it’s an instance of something that’s been a part of my life for nearly thirty years mingling with something that’s been part of my life for more than forty.

Today’s ramblings take us back to the 1989…but not until after we go back a bit further than that to one evening earlier in the 1980s and a broadcast of the CBS Evening News. I would guess that it was at least 1981, as I believe Dan Rather had taken over as anchor by that time. The news on that particular evening – I was most likely half-watching it while waiting to watch whatever was on after that – had an “in lighter news” kind of segment focusing on what was deemed to be one of the worst movies of all time, a real stinker of a science fiction Grade Z movie from 1953 entitled Robot Monster.

The image of the movies titular monster, a man wearing a gorilla costume and an old-fashioned diver’s helmet with rabbit ear antennas on top of it and a clay mask behind the helmet’s glass that was apparently intended to look like a skull (it didn’t), burned its way into my memory, and was still in place however many years later when 1989 rolled around.

Then, as now, I didn’t really watch a lot of TV. We had gotten a satellite dish a couple of years earlier – the big, old-fashioned kind – so there finally more options than just the one channel we could consistently pull in with our old antenna, but we had also just moved back into the house after completing the post-fire renovations, and I had moved into my moody teen years, and for the first time in a long time I had an actual room of my own, one that I didn’t have to share with one or both of my brothers, and that wasn’t a tiny claustrophobic space like my room in the trailer we’d been living in.

My room had my books, my comics, my drawing table, and my music; why did I need TV?

Still, one Saturday afternoon found me with the house to myself, and I decided to turn on the TV to see what was on. I tuned in to the Comedy Channel – this was in the days before comedy was centralized – thinking that maybe one of the Monty Python movies would be on or something, and there, on the screen, was the be-helmeted gorilla I recalled from years earlier.

“Hey,” I said to myself, “it’s that movie!”

But it wasn’t just the movie; there were people talking over it, making jokes and funny comments about what was happening on screen. I immediately twigged to the basic concept, but I was confused about the weird little silhouettes at the bottom of the screen.

I had, of course, stumbled upon Mystery Science Theater 3000, but given that I was catching the tail-end – literally: it was the bit in the movie with the stock footage of lizards fighting each other, or as Crow T. Robot (I later learned) put it, “Gecko-Roman wrestling” – so I hadn’t caught the helpfully-expository opening credits.

Still, I was instantly hooked, and became a regular viewer for years to come. (Although there was the dark period in my life – in college, mostly – during which I didn’t get to see it, because the Comedy Channel/Comedy Central wasn’t part of any cable package where I lived.)

While I may not be the most devoted fan, I’ve seen most of the “experiments,” and have followed it to its various homes on its path from the Comedy Channel to Netflix, and now to…comics?

It’s a strange proposition indeed, but, I would contend, no stranger than my initial, contextless exposure to the show all those years ago.

So how well does it make the transition from screen to page? That’s what we’re here to find out, isn’t it?

(Sirens and flashing lights) WE’VE GOT COMICS SIGN!

First, the set-up, which is helpfully explained, albeit without the catchy tune, as the comic opens. Kinga Forrester has developed a method to allow people – and bots – to experience being inside a comic book, thanks to her “Bubulat-r.”

After performing her test run with her assistant Max – AKA TV’s Son of TV’s Frank – Kinga sends the bubbles up to the Satellite of Love to trap Jonah and the bots in the comic Johnny Jason, Teen Reporter, a comic from the 1960s put out by the long-defunct publisher Dell, that is in the public domain.

While Jonah and the others attempt, in vain, to avoid capture, Tom Servo wants to be in the comic, and dives on in.

Once inside, he takes on the role of the protagonist – the original art is modified so that Tom’s head is on Johnny’s body – and it becomes Tom Servo, Teen Reporter.

Gypsy, M. Waverly, and Growler land in different parts of the comic, but we don’t see where Jonah and Crow end up.

The story of the comic within the comic opens with a failed attempt at kidnapping a young starlet, which many believe was merely a publicity stunt. Tom, as a teen reporter, is tasked with finding the truth, and heads to the young starlet’s ranch to get to the bottom of it.

While visiting the ranch, Tom runs afoul of the ranch foreman, who is obviously jealous of the gumball-machine-headed reporter, but later becomes the life of the swingin’ teen party that breaks out that evening – at least he does after Kinga and Max pop in as part of the “ad trap” to incorporate their Totino’s Pizza Roll sponsorship to replace Tom’s head with a bowl filled with delicious Pizza Rolls – but runs afoul of someone once again.

After coming out on top in that altercation, it’s clear that the starlet is quite fond of Tom, and Tom is pleased that things are finally going his way.

Throughout the comic, a quick shot of a bot gives you a clue as to who’s doing the riffing, though there are still times during which it’s unclear who’s saying what, given that Tom himself is injecting his own commentary.

Still, it’s a fun idea, and a clever conceit for riffing a comic story, which has an obvious appeal for someone like me who is a fan of both comics and smartass commentary, and there is a lot to comment on in any given comic, between the story, the dialogue, the art, and comic book storytelling-conventions.

It would be fun to see this continue beyond the initial mini-series and expand to include crossovers with some of the bigger publishers. Imagine the possibilities of adding some riffing commentary to classic comics.

There’s not too much to say about the art – and the comic itself says some of those things – but the original comic has the perfectly-competent, if bland, style of the comics of its era, Todd Nauck handles the host segment art characteristically well, and Mike Manley inserts the new elements into the existing comic art as seamlessly as possible. I also like that the printing creates the illusion of aging and yellowing, even though the comic is printed on relatively high-quality glossy paper.

The one weakness of the format is that if a joke doesn’t land it just sits there on the page, not as readily-forgotten as it might be with the dynamic flow of movie riffing. Fortunately, there aren’t too many instances of that.

Overall, it was a fun little comic, I look forward to seeing what comes next and finding out where Jonah and Crow ended up, and it’s something to tide fans over until the new season drops.

You can check out the ashcan preview of the comic for yourself by following the link in the issue details above.

What do you think, sirs?

Recommended Reading Watching

That does it for the Spotlight for this week. Be sure to come back next week to see what it shines upon.

As always, special thanks go out to Comic Logic Books & Artwork, my Local Comic Shop. Remember to support your LCS (find one here, if you don’t already have one).

Even though it may not feel like there is a reason to do so right now, supporting OpenDoor Comics is a thing you can do, by whitelisting the site in your ad blocker, by purchasing something from the Supply Closet or the OpenDoor Comics Shop, by creating your own comics on the OpenDoor Comics platform, or through directly giving money via Patreon or PayPal.

You can follow OpenDoor Comics on social media, too, and also be sure to share links to post.

In other words, keep circulating the links.