Hawkeye Annual #1, by Matt Fraction (writer), Javier Pulido (artist), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - That is kind of an odd dress Kate's sporting. I can't really figure a checkerboard pattern on a form-fitting dress. Eh, it's Kate's world.Which is why she headed to L.A., to get away from Clint's moping and her father's mid-life crisis. This means she's on her own when Madame Masque decides to take revenge for that little incident in Madripoor. She swipes Kate's stuff, and her car, and get her credit card cut up. Which leaves Kate broke and possession less, thousands of miles from her friends. Then masque presents herself as a concerned stranger (having removed the mask), but Kate sees through it due to a comment about cigarettes, and ultimately eludes Masque's trap. Of course, she's still stuck in Cali, broke and alone (except for Lucky), cat-sitting for two old ladies.
I thought Masque was more reluctant to let someone see her face than that. But all I have to go off is that Avengers/Thunderbolts crossover where she helped them stop Count Nefaria, which presented her as massively paranoid, to the point she made copies of her memories every night. Which did neatly thwart Stark's attempt to wipe his secret identity from everyone's mind. I'm pretty much always in favor of thwarting Stark's totalitarian tendencies. Anyway, it's a nice story, and the little internal monologues - with simplified Kate image - are amusing.
Pulido's art is the sticking point here. Probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the people drawn in this book are strictly black outlines. Pulido actually draws people - with clothes and facial features - in about 2 panels per page. The comic averages 6 panels per page. I can't discern a pattern. Sometimes the ones he draws are consecutive panels, sometimes it's the first and last, or third and fifth. Sometimes he draws Kate, but no one else. Sometimes everyone is an outline. Sometimes he draws Kate along with her little thought boxes, sometimes not. It's like he figured as long as he shows you the details once, that's good enough. You really don't need to see them again. It feels like it was done deliberately, but I can't figure the meaning. It doesn't solely happen to Kate when she's confused or doubting herself (where it might indicate her feeling lost). And it doesn't only happen to other people when she's caught up in her own thoughts (where it could indicate self-absorption). Which makes it feel like Pulido was trying to save time, which is too bad, because I normally dig his stuff. There's one panel of Masque at the head of a group of henchmen dragging Kate to her pain room. The body language he gives her beautifully conveys the frustration and impatience she's feeling. She's in the middle of throwing her arms in the air in disgust with their incompetence and it's perfect. Too bad there isn't more of that.
X-Men #3, by Brian Wood (writer), Oliver Coipel (penciler, inker), Mark Morales (inker), Laura Martin (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Psylocke never seemed like a spear aficionado to me, but she certainly carries it well. I think. Going to take a while to swing it from that position, I suppose, but they'll be too busy dodging the old psychic knife.Arkea has traveled back to Budapest, where she first landed. There's a hospital full of people with cybernetic implants there she can control, plus she may have left some pieces of herself behind in the landing. The X-Men pursue, the X-Men fight the controlled patients, and Psylocke has a chance to take Arkea out, but hesitates, since that's an ally's body she's using. One wonders whether she'd hesitate if it was someone she didn't know. There's some disagreement about what to do, then Karima reasserts control and throws herself on the psychic knife, apparently killing Arkea and possibly lobotomizing herself in the process. Back at the Mansion, Kitty and some of the students have to deal with the remnants of Arkea wreaking havoc with the environmental systems and using the Danger Room to create lesser forms of Karima to attack. Kitty ultimately shorts out all the servers. And thus, the day is saved.
I can't tell you who inked what pages, but I think you can definitely tell the difference between Coipel and Morales' inks. One of them seems to give the work a much smoother line, which also makes everyone look a lot younger. Rogue looks to be roughly Kitty's age on the last page, which isn't the case when she's loading Karima's body in the car on the page before that. Coipel's good at expressions, as usual, but the fight scenes feel perfunctory, though maybe that was at Wood's direction. "Here's a panel of someone making an action pose. Maybe there's an explosion or bodies flying as well." There's no flow between panels, and little sense of real movement or impact within panels. But I've seen that before from Coipel's art, and like I said, the fight felt tacked on, so I'm not sure it was supposed to be impressive. I really doubt this was the end of their problems with Arkea, precisely because things ended so easily.
Of course, I'm jumping at shadows right now with this book. Everything seems suspicious. Karima reasserting control just long enough to stop Arkea. The device Pixie teleported into the upper atmosphere that didn't appear to be a bomb is suspicious (a transmitter? a storage device?). The whole battle at the Mansion seemed easy. If Arkea had studied all their files, wouldn't it know that fiddling with the environmental controls wouldn't do squat to Bling? Is it significant that Bling says she punched the excess Karima's into pixels, but Hellion comments their ordinance didn't feel like pixels? Is she supposed to be lying? Should I be concerned she's currying favor with Kitty, or is that strictly what she framed it as, a way to get someone on the faculty to have her back when it comes time for punishment over that fight in the first issue? Maybe the Hellion comment was meant to be funny. I don't know, I can't seem to tag the tone of this book yet. And with a big Event Tie-In looming for the fall, it may not get any easier.
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