What I Bought 8/30/2020 - Part 1

Hey, it's September! Which means summer is almost over. Child and Teenage Me would never have believed that some day, they'd be excited about summer ending.

I didn't track down all the comics from last month I wanted, but I managed to find five so far, which isn't bad, these days. Let's start it off with the last issue of a mini-series.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #4, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Can Vic bleed through that mask, or does it just get trapped against his face underneath it? That would be unpleasant.

Vic's back in the present, and it's still chaos in Hub City. He's convinced he has to face this devil, Tot says he's being an idiot and that Vic Sage needs to get on the air and try to get people to calm down. Vic goes on the air and encourages people to fight back against injustice, without burning everything down. He also reveals himself as the Question on live TV. Good thing nobody watches network news, anymore.

He blows up the abandoned building that started all this, but his target isn't there, so he heads for the Mayor's office. At which point the Question kicks the shit out of a bunch of cops in riot gear. That was fun. He tries to convince the mayor to do the right thing, guy shoots himself instead. The "devil" shows up talking shit, Myra blows his head off. Which doesn't do a thing for all the rioting and everything else going on in the streets, to Vic's despair. But he puts the Question mask back on and goes to do. . . something.

I get that Lemire probably doesn't want to do a story where all the problems are solved by the costumed vigilante beating up one guy. But then what is the point? That Vic is screwing up by deciding he's just going to be the Question? That he can do more to address the actual systemic is as Vic Sage, investigative reporter, and that by trying to rely on punching dudes he's just playing into the "devil's" hands? The devil's got him so fixated on how they keep doing this dance life after life that Vic ignores the big picture?

I don't know, it's just kind of weird ending. Vic wins, but he loses, and maybe he didn't actually win because he was always fighting the wrong battle. And he doesn't get that, so he's just going to keep losing, isn't he? I think that was kind of how the O'Neill/Cowan series went. The longer it went on, the more Vic turned to the Question, the more destroyed he got. Because he couldn't make things better putting on a mask and punching people. Not for the problems that really plagued the city.

I feel like the panels on the second and third pages from the end are out of sequence. Or the lettering is in the wrong boxes. Vic falls to his knees in front of a puddle and triggers the gas to attach the mask and stands up as Tot asks him if he thinks he's special. But on the next page, he's back on his knees staring into the puddle and responding to Tot's question. So I don't know if he lost hope briefly again in one panel, or if the question about him being special was supposed to be in the panel where he was still on his knees, and he gets up afterward. Were the panels supposed to run across the two pages, or read one, then the other? I don't know.

Other than that, a lot of tall, narrow panels. Especially during the scenes in the Mayor's office. They aren't necessarily zoomed in on a character's face, so I think, since those scenes heavily involve Marlick, the devil, it's supposed to make you feel trapped with him. There's no getting out and away from him, from what he's saying, from what he's planning. Most of the panels in Vic's scenes aren't that way. Some of them are very compressed, spread out the width of the page, but short, and others are somewhere in between. Things are shifting for him. He has new information, about himself and his enemy, and he's making decisions about his life that could be a major shift.

When the two of them are together, the panel shapes move back-and-forth depending on who has the upper hand. Tall and narrow when Marlick's got the edge, shorter and wider when Vic's fighting back. That's pretty much all I have on this.

What I Bought 6/29/2020 - Part 1

There were no comics out I wanted this week, and as far as I know, there aren't any I want coming out next week. But I have a few books from earlier in June that showed up, so let's take a look at the third issue of a couple of DC titles.

Amethyst #3, by Amy Reeder (writer/artist), Marissa Louise (colorist), Gabriela Downie (letterer) - I gotta say, compared to riding a giant caterpillar or a narwhal, a flying horse seems kinda dull.

Amy does receive help from the Kingdom of Aquamarine, except it's in the form of a prince who really doesn't want to accompany her. So there's some squabbling, they find an encampment of nomadic merchants, who Amethyst has to defend from Prince Topaz, and then they use a secret passage that Prince Maxixe knows to get them to Dark Opal's Castle Greyskull looking fortress.

I feel like Amethyst is supposed to be learning a lesson from all this, but a) I'm not sure what it is, and b) I don't think she's learning it. Phoss keeps insisting Amethyst spends too much time in her castle or up in the air with her flying horse, which feels significant. But Amy only seems to take the advice to interact with everyday people like the Banned under duress. She also doesn't seem very appreciative of the allies she does have, for as much griping as she does about all the people that won't help her. To be fair, she did grant the Banned safe haven in whatever is left of her kingdom, which is nice. She still has some sense of right and wrong, she's just weak on the concept of persuasion. Or negotiation.

I wonder if Amy has fallen into some bizarre reflection of Gemworld, where the people she could always trust are now against her, and those she couldn't are actually helpful. I don't know, just a gut feeling, which is almost certainly wrong given my awful track record of predictions.

The opening page is nice, a quick recap done as Amethyst explaining the situation to Lady Aquamarine, set against a backdrop of a map of Gemworld. I love the the lands apparently still form a giant skull. So odd, and given how often the different lands fight, you'd think they'd have spread the landmass out a little more. Make an archipelago in the form of a constellation or something like that. The lands of Diamond being the teeth is a nice touch.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #3, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Dang Vic, what did you eat to create that kind of a cloud?

In 1940, gumshoe Charles Sage takes a case from the sister of a missing factory worker. Maggie and her brother were encouraging the others to unionize, and Jacob's vanished. He barely gets started before some guys show up to gently suggest he drop the case. At which point Charles abruptly becomes the Question, beats their asses, and then turns back to normal. He continues working on the case, but keeps having flashes of being other people, in other times, which he doesn't understand. He gets captured and dragged to a building built on top of the mine the guy last issue died in. At which point Maggie shows up, and stabs him. Man with a Thousand Faces 2, Man with No Faces 0. But in the present, Vic thinks he knows what he's up against, and thinks it's going to tell him who he really is.

I don't know. Having the Question fight an enemy who can take on different appearances as it pleases, who can manipulate people from all walks of life and levels of money and influence, seems like an appropriate match up. As Richard Dragon notes, this isn't an enemy you can just choke the life out of, but Vic is a reporter, he can shine the light in other ways, if he remembers to.

At the same time, the whole past life thing just doesn't work great for me. Denny O'Neill and Denys Cowan gave the Question a certain amount of mysticism (or maybe spirituality is a better word), but he's not exactly magical himself. This smacks a little bit of whatever it was they did with him in the New 52, where he was an angel that forgot who he was. Or was he Judas? Or was that the Phantom Stranger? I know, I know, better to not bring up such things at all.

There are a few points in the issue where Charles' face almost disappears. Not counting the brief moment where he becomes a later reincarnation of himself. Mostly the eyes are shadowed to the point nothing is visible, but sometimes Cowan draws him so that even the mouth is a barely distinguishable line. Maybe it's just a mood thing - this is very much in line with a noir, with the private detective getting into hot water after a dame brings him a sob story - but it's usually when he's following a lead, or trying to put the pieces together. Trying to figure out what the right question is.

What I Bought 1/18/2020

I couldn't find the last issue of Steeple anywhere over the weekend, but I did get the other two books from the last two weeks I was interested in. Even if that did mean grabbing that Black Cat issue with the ugly variant cover. Nothing coming out this week, though.

Black Cat #8, by Jed MacKay (writer), Dike Ruan and Annie Wu (artists), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - I mean, is the Black Widow even in any of the Earth X stuff? I assume she must be, because if she wasn't, why not just come up with a Black Cat Earth X design?

There are two threads. One is a daytime conversation between Felicia and her mother, where Felicia tries to get her to accept a cruise to Germany to get her out of the line of fire of Odessa's forces. Although Miss Hardy feels confident she won't be targeted. The other, more entertaining thread is Felicia bringing along the current Beetle to help her swipe the plans for the Randall Gate in Iron Fist's basement. Which leads to Felicia getting to play with Danny, while the Beetle gets her ass kicked by the little girl that's currently Iron Fist, I guess.

I think this is playing off that Iron Fist: the Living Weapon series Kaare Andrews did in 2014. Or maybe some GN called Immortal Iron Fists that came out two years ago, also by Andrews? Hey, let's just be impressed a writer at Marvel actually bothers to pay attention to what other writers are doing with characters.

Now I think Annie Wu drew the parts with Felicia talking with her mother. Granting I haven't seen her artwork since Fraction's Hawkeye run, but that part of the issue looks more similar to what she did back then than the part with Beetle and Iron Fist.  It works for the talking parts, Wu uses body language well. I wouldn't normally think of Felicia being as nervous as she is here, but it's her mother. Special circumstances. Felicia's on the defensive a lot, backing up or with arms crossed, while her mother is leaning in, or pointing at her, or the one initiating physical contact.

The costumed part of the book, the eyes are bigger, shading is softer, faces are rounder, so I'm guessing that's Ruan's work, which I'm not familiar with at all. I like it, the comedy parts with the little dragon are amusing, Felicia's expressions work, the fight scene is good. I like the tilted panels as it goes back-and-forth between Danny and Felicia throwing attacks at each other. Also, Danny being happy to just fight a thief villain instead of someone out to "absorb his chi or cut off his hands" makes me smile. Even if it does piss Felicia off to be called a villain.

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #2, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - Alright, time for a Vic Sage/Jonah Hex team-up!

The issue is set in the Hub City of 1886, and follows a Charles Victor Szasz, secretive town blacksmith. He tries to protect the apparently only black family in the town when the husband is framed for a brutal murder, but fails, thanks to a preacher who spurs the townsfolk on and isn't what he appears. Szasz is found by a native woman who talks to a skeleton and throws a faceless mask on him and tells him to go kill the preacher, who is really the "creature of a thousand faces." He hesitates and fails, and the scene shifts to the early 1940s.

OK, guy with no face against creature with a thousand, sure, interesting contrast. Vic's been trying to stop this guy for multiple lifetimes, and I'm guessing next issue will demonstrate he keeps fucking it up in one way or another. Or maybe it's always the same way, He hesitates. I don't recall the O'Neill/Cowan Question being big on killing people, so maybe that's the hang-up. Although 1886 Vic's issue was he'd killed too many innocent people previously.

There's a couple of points I'm not sure the art and the writing are on the same page. Dialogue that seems like it should fit with Vic, being said by one of the guys pursuing him, judging by how much of a beard the speaker had. But most of it is really good. There's a panel of him walking through the desert with the sun shining over his shoulder where, Sienkiewicz goes heavier on the scratchy linework to put Vic's face in shadow, and there's a few circular yellow arcs that overlap his face. You can just barely make out the lines of his eyes and nose. It's a really effective way to show how the light would hide his face from where we're viewing him.

And I like this trio of panels with Vic's eye spilling into the panel of the creature, while the arrow uses that moment to find its target.

What I Bought 11/20/2019 - Part 1

It was actually a pretty decent haul for comics this week. 4 books, plus 2 books from last month that finally showed up. The downside is, right now there's only 6 comics coming out the rest of the year I want to get. December is gonna be a long, cold month.

Anyway! Here's one comic about a person who thinks they're nothing, and another about one with no face.

Test #5, by Christopher Sebela (writer), Jen Hickman (artist), Harry Saxon (colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letterer) - Got the whole, wide something in their hands.

Aleph is alive again, making their way to Laurelwood, again, talking to Mary (who is actually Laurelwood) as he goes. Aleph had found the town once before by chance, all their modifications somehow honing in on it. But Aleph wasn't ever ready, or was close to dying, or the city was being torn apart, so Laurel kept resetting things to get how they want it. But now that they're together, there's still the matter of what comes next, and that's a bit of a stumbling block. Aleph isn't entirely sure what they want, and even when things seem to be going well, Laurel is more like us than they might admit.

It's a bit of an ominous ending, or maybe just realistic. Hoping that you can find some perfect point, then just hold there, isn't going to happen. Laurel mentions it midway through, that humans always want some big ending where everything is resolved, but it doesn't work like that. Things keep happening, good and bad, only the details change. The future is going to have a lot of the same bullshit mistakes the present does, and the past did. Just different people making the mistakes, even if they don't think they're people.

I like the last few pages, where Aleph initially wakes up alone in an empty apartment, then goes out to meet Aleph in an empty town, devoid of any details. Then you turn the page and Aleph's waking up again, but it's their apartment with Laurel, and there are paintings on the wall. Clothing is a little more elaborate - Aleph's at least wearing a collared shirt now - and the town has other people, the buildings have marquees on them now. Laurel is still learning from Aleph, but not everything is something Aleph would want them to learn. Although there's the suspicious part of me that wonders if Laurel killed Aleph again before that reboot or retooling.

This was interesting. I don't know that I love it, but it was neat. Be good to read it all over again at some point soon. 

Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage #1, by Jeff Lemire (writer), Denys Cowan (penciler), Bill Sienkiewicz (inker), Chris Sotomayor (colorist), Willie Schubert (letterer) - I love that swirly smoke and the implied red building in the background.

The Question exposes a councilman molesting underage kids, but finds a curious ring on the councilman. While he's chasing that rabbit hole, Myra is accepting her brother the mayor is a scumbag, and the entire city begins to go up in flames over a cop shooting a black man for running a red light. But Vic is trying to figure out why he found a skeleton in a long-abandoned building with a bullet hole in its head, and a mask just like his over its face. So naturally he goes to Richard Dragon, who roofies his tea, and now Vic's wandering around in the past. As you do.

I'm curious what direction this will go with the stuff in the past versus the stuff in the present. Vic is chasing down this secret order while the city quite possibly burns. It's clear the Mayor won't take any action that will help, but is that a conspiracy? Or is he just an incompetent, hamhanded doofus? Is Tot right that Vic Sage would be more use than the Question right now? Maybe none of this is going to factor into the story, but it feels like the moment Vic decides to just leave to go talk to Richard Dragon about his visions is a big deal.

There are several moments in this where his eyes aren't visible, even as a Vic Sage. They're these black pits, even if the rest of his face is perfectly visible. The moment after Myra walks away with the mayor's attorney. Again when he sees the video of the shooting and stumbles into the riot. I like how placid all the panels are on that page - dull colors, empty alleys - and then the final panel, a brick comes in from the right side of the page and smashes a window with a big red sound effect. And then the majority of the next page is Vic standing there alone on one side of the street, while the other side is total chaos. Then, in the panel below that, he pulls his hat down low and walks away. Caught in the Question, rather than the problem at hand.

Two Halves That Aren't Whole

Reading Huntress: Cry for Blood, I was pretty curious about the connection between Helena and Vic Sage. Vic describes her as being like looking in a mirror. Richard Dragon describes her as Vic's other half.

As Vic told her, they both have problems with anger and violence. With Vic, in the latter stages of the O'Neil/Cowan series, it caused him to lose perspective and the inner calm he'd been developing. He grew frustrated with how little of a difference he was making, with the people he couldn't save. He kept trying to fix things by hitting people. He forgot (or gave up on) being a reporter, even though he might have had more success going that route. Letting the people of Hub City know what he'd seen and learned, in the hope they'd stir themselves to action. But he was too far gone by that point.

With Helena, the anger works similarly. It makes her too stubborn to know when to back off, so even though everyone is looking for the Huntress, she still goes to try and shake down that reporter, who turns out to have been killed to help frame her. Her anger also leads to a lack of trust on her part. When Nightwing offers to help, she rejects him, because she thinks he's doing so not because he's actually concerned for her, but because he thinks there's something wrong with her that needs fixing.

For both of them, anger leads to isolation, and near destruction. It makes it that much harder for them to accomplish their goals, because they're too caught up in pain and frustration to see they're either being manipulated, or going about things in the wrong way.

But there was something about Vic's 'like looking in a mirror' line that stuck with me. What I realized was, when you look in a mirror, you see yourself, but reversed. All the same features are there, just on the opposite side. So what does that mean for the two of them?

One thing I hit on was their pasts, namely that Helena knows hers, and Vic doesn't. Sure there are certain things about herself Helena didn't know (which she learned over the course of the mini-series), but she knows a lot. That her family was killed, and she wasn't. That her family was part of a mob, that the men who took her in afterward were killers, who taught her how as well. Vic, conversely, knows none of that. He was an orphan, no knowledge of his parents, origins, any of that. Helena is driven forward by what she does know about her past, while Vic was driven by what he didn't. Helena needs to avenge her family, and that fuels the anger. Vic needs to learn things, uncover truths and expose them to light, but the frustration that mounts with not being able to answer questions about his past continued to build as his series progressed. The fact he couldn't see if he was making a difference just contributed to the problem.

The Hero Leaves The City To Save Himself

No post tomorrow or Tuesday. Hopefully there will be one (probably a book review) on Wednesday. Sometime in the evening, assuming my brain's in the same time zone as the rest of me by then.

I finished reading the O'Neil/Cowan Question series, the monthly one, anyway. The city hadn't been improved by the end. There might be fewer dirty cops and politicians, but the honest ones were too few to do any good, the public seemed to know it, and the city was completely broke. Vic Sage, investigative reporter, couldn't help the city, and for the last year of the title, he doesn't really try. Vic opts more and more for the Question's approach of breaking laws - and bones. But that's no good. He keeps beating up the same people over and over again. They don't learn, and getting beat up doesn't convince them to stop committing crimes anymore than being beaten convinces Sage to stop playing vigilante.

By the end, Sage isn't quite what Batman accused him of being at the start of the series. He's not half-doing the crimefighter thing, and he's certainly not using it to bolster his reporting career. But he's still operating on anger and violence, rather than planning or thinking. He only returns moderately to those patterns when Shiva reemerges and demonstrates how far he's slipped since they last met. Even then, it doesn't last, and the Question keeps pushing himself on against all common sense. So, not that different from Batman, in someways.

Ultimately, Vic leaves the city before he falls apart entirely, even as it does fall apart. Which is what surprised me. Not only does he not fix things, he doesn't continue trying to fix things until he's broken himself. I tend to expect the hero will never give up, never surrender, unless they're unable to continue, and maybe that's what happened here, only it was less obvious than the Question being physically broken. He threw himself at Hub City's problems until much of the progress he'd made moving past his anger was gone, until he was emotionally torn open. In that state, he wasn't any good to the city. In the last few issues, he crashes his car from exhaustion, gets stripped and dumped, then some skell puts on the Question outfit, and roams the city robbing and killing. Not much of a legacy for a hero. So maybe he had to leave. "No-Face" wasn't scaring criminals, wasn't inspiring the populace (as they mostly aren't aware he exists), and he wasn't in the proper state of mind to be useful himself.

Still, it's interesting that he leaves, but his sometime lover and friend Myra stays, as does Izzy O'Toole. Myra is the Mayor, but she was all set to leave, before she decided she had a duty to the people who elected her to try and fix things. O'Toole's a bad cop turned good, who is trying hard to clean up the city with a couple dozen clean cops. Both of them had power given to them by others in Hub City, whereas the Question didn't. Vic Sage might have, if you consider that some people turned to him for news on the corrupt and distressing happenings of the city, but Vic hadn't been doing that job very well.

As for the Question, the power he wielded was power he took for himself. Richard Dragon and Shiva taught him some things, but he's the one who opted to use it as he did. His reasons were still ultimately about himself, not others, and that's why he couldn't save things. Or it's that you can't solve vast municipal problems by beating up drug pushers. That doesn't fix potholes or put gas in the fire engines.

It's A Nice Trick, But Is It Widely Applicable?

I'm talking about Shiva's little stunt in The Question #37. I guess it was Montoya and Rodor's trick too. They voided themselves of all emotion and became invisible to Black Lantern Vic Sage. Like the title says, it's a nice trick. I'm not quite sure how it works. How did Shiva rid herself of all will? Is it a willingness to accept everything, reaching a state of mind where she doesn't try to resist anything? 'Become like water'? 

I'm also a little surprised how easily Montoya and Rodor were able to follow suit. Shiva's had who knows what kinds of odd training, so I can buy that she can suppress or expel all emotion from herself. Plus, she was there to fight a Black Lantern, and she'd done that, so she accomplished her goal, and maybe that makes it easier. 

But Renee and Aristotle don't have nearly her training, and I figured they both had deeper ties to Vic, so the ease with which they divorced themselves from their feelings was surprising. Still, this whole thing is pretty strange anyway, so I guess allowances have to be made. And much of The Question seemed to be about Sage trying to overcome his anger at the world and focus instead on helping people, rather than just lashing out. In that sense, the characters surviving by rising above their emotions fits. 

My other thoughts are related, I think. First, is this tactic going to show up in Blackest Night stuff still to come? Second, is this related to why the Black Lantern ring couldn't revive Dove? It said he was at peace, with no residual feelings to exploit, so did that make him undetectable to the ring, as our heroes made themselves to Vic? Being invisible to your enemies would be handy, either to search for a weakness, or to launch an attack. Except, it seems like the various Corps will be the key to victory, and they have to feel their respective emotions to use their baubles, which would make it difficult for them to feel nothing. I can't see how that would work, but I imagine there's a loophole somewhere. Assuming the "feeling nothing means Black Lanterns can't see you" approach will have any wider use than this comic and wherever Current Question continues the pursuit of her predecessor.

It'd Be Quite A Shift

Next month DC is releasing those special issues of series that were canceled but are coming back from the dead because it's Blackest Night and the dead will rise, and so on. Suicide Squad #67 is the only one I'm positive I'll buy, though there are a couple others I'm going to at least consider when I see them. One of the releases is Question #37, where Black Lantern Vic Sage Question will confront Renee Montoya Question. 

Over the last two years or so, DC's been releasing trades of the Denny O'Neil/Denys Cowan Question series. I talked a bit about it back in early summer when I picked up Volumes 2 and 3. Volume 5 came out in October, and I'll buy it eventually. That takes the trades up to issue #30, and there were only 36 issues originally, which would suggest there's one trade left to go. 

I'm wondering if they'll include the Blackest Night issue in that trade, since it is a continuation of the series in a sense. It probably won't fit with wherever the series ended at originally, what with the series having ended 20 years ago, and the main character at that time being dead now. It could be fun to have there as a comparison piece though. "Here's how they did it in the '80s, here's how they do it now" thing. 

It's more likely DC will opt to make a trade that collects all these "back from the dead", since they're all linked, but it could be interesting the other way. If nothing else, they'd have to finally start releasing some Suicide Squad trades so they could reach the end of the series and toss the Blackest Night issue in. Which is probably another reason they wouldn't go that way.

The Legend Grows Slowly

Something else that interests me about The Question is how much of an unknown the character is to his city through the first 18 issues. Outside of Izzy O'Toole, who starts out as the dirtiest cop in Hub City, then becomes the cleanest, nobody seems aware of the Question's existence until they meet him. At one point when he's trying to protect O'Toole from a killer, he has to fight his way through some cops because they have no idea who he is. He doesn't inspire fear in the criminal element because they don't know who he is either. It usually takes a few pages for someone to notice he doesn't have a face.

Unlike Batman, who had people muttering about giant bats, and reporters asking cops if there was some sort of night vigilante, nobody seems aware of the Question. No reporters are asking O'Toole or any of the politicians about him. The criminals aren't discussing him in hushed tones, or making plans to draw him out and eliminate him. I think it's supposed to indicate just how massive a job improving Hub City is going to be, that one guy can only do so much, and his influence can only spread so quickly.

An Angry Question?

Some months back I bought the first trade volume of the O'Neil/Cowan Question series, and I bought Volumes 2 and 3 at the same time I picked up Essential Defenders Volume 3. The Question is what I'd call a solidly good series, at least through the 18 issues I've read, as it covers the difficulties in affecting change, on both a personal and metropolitan level. Denys Cowan's artwork is pretty nice too, more than capable of depicting Hub City as a grimy, rundown mess, and of illustrating the frequent fight scenes.

The series is giving me a lot to think about, but for tonight, I felt like talking about The Question #15 in particular. There will absolutely be spoilers, so now you're forewarned. There have been a series of murders in Hub City recently, each victim a black male, each left hanging. Into this enters Loomis McCarthy, a private investigator who visually reminds me of a more unkempt Harvey Bullock, and who is even more unpleasant as a person. Among his less endearing personality traits is a serious racist streak. Vic Sage figures Loomis might know something useful, but quickly finds the P.I. so distasteful he can't even hang around him long enough to dig for information. In fact, he comes to suspect Loomis, whose presence in town wasn't known until after the murders started, as the perpetrator.

Loomis seems oblivious to Vic's unease around him, always glad to see Vic when their paths cross. Until Loomis makes another racist joke in front of a black cop, who proceeds to kick Loomis' disheveled hind end, as Vic looks on. When Loomis wants to know why Sage did nothing, he explains he was being saved the trouble, which leads Loomis to use less than flattering terminology to describe him. Vic switches to his Question garb, now more sure than ever McCarthy is involved, and ends up trailing him to the man actually responsible, as McCarthy had pieced the truth together on his own. Sage then makes a news report detailing what he learned, and this is where it gets interesting.

Loomis shows up at the station, and tells Vic he didn't mean it yesterday when he said what he did, and he understands that Vic stayed out of it because he knew Loomis could handle it*. Vic loses his temper and lays out how much Loomis digusts him, and reiterates that if the cop hadn't thrown a punch, he would have. The man responsible for the murders appears, tries to shoot Vic, and well, Loomis takes the bullet. He can't figure out why McCarthy did it, and I find it pretty curious myself.

Why would Loomis McCarthy do that for Vic? The larger story reason is probably to illustrate that even people we might regard as terrible people are capable of noble acts. The fact he died for Vic, leading another person in the newsroom to describe Loomis as a hero probably served a purpose in tipping Sage off the balance he'd been working to maintain since his time with Richard Dragon. A man Vic had written off as scum, one the Question might very well not spit on if he was on fire, had turned around and saved Sage's life. If the people you think are the problem are capable of that, how does you figure out who you're supposed to be saving, and who you're supposed to be fighting?

In story, I think it tells us something about Vic Sage. Not so much his views on things, but more what's inside him. I think we can deduce that whether he admitted it or not, Loomis McCarthy was a lonely guy, as he has the sort of nature that would probably wear on people quickly, even if they agreed with his politics. The cosntant crude jokes and drinking would probably not be found endearing by many people. So why look to Sage as a potential friend? Sage has a lot of anger and self-rightousness inside him, it's a large piece of what drives him, and he has to struggle to control it or he winds up in trouble**. Maybe Loomis had a lot of anger inside as well, at himself, the world, whatever, and in Vic Sage, he thought he saw a kindred spirit. Sure Vic might say he wanted to pound Loomis' face in, but maybe the P.I. figures Vic just says that to maintain appearances, so he doesn't have to take a lot of guff from other people. Inside, Loomis might think Sage was just like him. If Loomis felt that way, contrast that with their outer appearances. Loomis is short, out of shape, constantly sporting stubble, he drinks, he smokes, his clothes are rumpled, and he works as a private investigator, which is probably not the most highly respected position. Vic is tall, athletic, reasonably attractive, keeps clean-shaven, wears clothes that are at least in good condition (I'm not the person to judge how fashionable they are), and he's a well-respected as a reporter that gets at the truth, and isn't afraid of speaking it. He may be what Loomis wished he was, or thought he could be, and so he wants to be around Sage, maybe some of that will rub off on him.

* Even though Loomis was pretty obviously losing before the cop's partner was able to restrain him.

** Which is the case over the next story, where Vic keeps behaving impulsively, because he's too angry to be calm, and it keeps getting him in over his head.