One Hot Panel: Marauders, The Mask, and Wonder Woman #750
By Zack Quaintance — Hey all, welcome to yet another new (hopefully!) weekly feature for Comics Bookcase. At this point, I’m sure you’ve seen the headline and are wondering, Is the title of this new feature intended to evoke California funk-rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1995 album One Hot Minute, the one that featured Anthony and Flea forging an ill-fated alliance with guitarist Dave Novarro? You bet it is.
Anyway, RHCP aside, the point of this new feature is simple: each week I intend to pick out one hot panel from the comics I read…and possibly more. In fact, for this first installment, I’ve got three! So, check out the panels below plus a few words about why I like each of them with the same passion that ol’ Anthony Kiedis likes California.
Enjoy!
Marauders #6
Artwork in this issue is by Matteo Lolli & Mario Del Pennino with colors by Erick Arciniega & Federico Blee. Writing by Gerry Duggan.
Why it’s hot: I knew it! I knew from the start of this whole Krakoa business that the villains brought into the peaceful mutant unity fold couldn’t stay on their best behaviors forever. Someone had to be cooking something up behind the scenes, and here we get that twist, played to dramatic perfection by directly endangering Lockheed…who unlike the other characters probably can’t be brought back.
What I especially like about the twist in this paneI is that Shaw is not moving against the new mutant status quo. No, he’s entirely motivated by trying to snatch power within it for himself and his family, making it less of a standard tired good v. evil superhero conflict and closer to the intrigue of TV shows like Succession or Game of Thrones. Also well done is that it’s the guy tasked with leading the capitalistic side of Krakoa that mucks things up due to greed.
The Mask: I Pledge Allegiance to the Mask #4
Artwork by Patric Reynolds and Lee Loughridge, with writing by Christopher Cantwell and lettering by Nate Piekos.
I said this in my Top Comics to Buy for January 22, 2020 piece, but this Mask comic is “one of the best pieces of satire in any medium about our current political, um, situation.” Obviously, I stand by that…I mean, I wrote it like four days ago. Furthermore, I’d like to submit this comic as evidence of exactly what I was talking about. Enjoy. I think it speaks well for itself.
Wonder Woman #750 - A Brave New World
Artwork by Bryan Hitch and Mike Spicer, with story by Scott Snyder.
So, I’ve written/reported at length elsewhere about what DC Comics may be planning for the future. I won’t go too far into that, as the vast majority of the reporting I did in October still stands. Part of that story, though, was the idea that DC would be sort of reconfiguring its history to make Wonder Woman the world’s first superhero, having appeared to society at large during the advent of World War I. Well, in this panel we get that actual appearance. This, folks, is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg for some major changes made to DC Comics’ monthly shared superhero universe in the months and years to come. Exciting stuff.
Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.