John Buys Comics, August 5th Edition

The Sixth Gun No. 2

So last month when this came out I was running a bit behind, and last week when issue two came out I completely missed that fact. Well, I won't be dropping the ball on one of the best series of the year any longer, no sir!

So: this is (so far) the story of a gun, one of a set of six, that is in the possession of a preacher's daughter. The former owner of the gun, Confederate General Oliander Bedford Hume, is dead and shackled to his casket by chains of cold iron, yet he is pursuing her, aided by the holders of the other five: his wife and four Apocalypse-themed riders. Her only ally in trying to escape the grim fate that Hume has planned for her is Drake Sinclair, a thoroughly unscrupulous and quite mysterious rogue.

Here are the four excellent things about this series: One and Two: the writing and art. Both are top-notch. The book is a joy to look at and reads like nobody's business. Three: it manages to capture the same sense of amorality that the Old West of, say, Sergio Leone has. It is a terrible place, where evil and atrocity can really shine.

Fourth: this is one of the few places that I've really ever seen magic and the occult modernized successfully. Usually, were one to read a tale involving cowboys fighting over a magic artifact then that object would be the Spear of Destiny or something else form long ago. The Hell-forged revolvers and oracular lynching victims of The Sixth Gun are highly satisfying extensions of the mythologies of the past into the present (well, almost. In geologic terms). Why shouldn't the mystical grow and change along with everything else, after all?

Just plain great, on all fronts.

Warlord of Io

I love James Turner's comics, and not just because I get to talk about vector graphics every time another one comes out (honestly, I know nothing about 'em. I just like writing "vector graphics" - the words roll off the typing fingers).  

If you've been reading my blatherings about comics for long enough then you may recall that Warlord of Io had a single issue maybe a year ago and then moved online. Diamond's distribution policies dictated that it wasn't getting ordered in sufficient quantities, so pfft, no more issues for me. Needless to say, I was delighted to see this collection on the shelf yesterday. 

As for the plot: the titular Warlord is Zing, twentysomething video game aficionado and aspiring rock god, who inherits the throne of the Jovian satellite Io when his father abruptly retires. Zing is swiftly overthrown by a military junta and must balance his aspirations, the good of his people and the demands of ladyfriend Moxy Comet as he flees for his life. 

Setting this thing in the far future and also in orbit around Jupiter is the perfect showcase for Turner's inventiveness - I think that this book might actually include more crazy monster designs than the last Rex Libris trade, which was quite literally about crazy monsters being everywhere. Not that this is an example of craziness at the expense of plot - Io is a lovely little character piece that just happens to have weirdo aliens on every page. Hooray!

Brain Camp

I've managed my time poorly yet again. In keeping with my poorly-thought-out policy of reading books after floppies, I just finished this and it's late at night. Trust me, I would go on but I need sleep. Here are the highlights:

1. Faith Erin Hicks excels at drawing young people in strange situations. Here we have a book about science fictional weirdness at a summer camp. Predictably, it is great-looking.

2. Susan Kim and Laurence Klaven: I hadn't read them before, though I may now have to go back and pick up City of Spies. Again: young people in weird situations. Plucky youths against adult conspiracy! There's a reason I read so many books that could be described in those terms whilst I was growing up and that reason is that done well they equal pure entertainment.

To summarize: GOOD BOOK. And Hicks' art looks delightful in colour.

Kill Shakespeare No. 4

Another  highly entertaining issue! This is the one, in fact, that out-Shakespeare nerded me - I had to look up a couple of the minor characters. In my defence, I was at my most slackerly the year that I was supposedly reading all of the plays. Wait, that's not really much of a defence, is it? In any case: good job.

BUT.

I have one major problem with this issue, and since I didn't notice it earlier it's probably some form of editorial oversight or the like. There's a lot of olde timey English being spoken here, which is appropriate for something set not just in Shakespearian England but in Shakespeare itself, but there are some major grammatical problems here. Thee, thou and thy are not interchangeable! Oh, the madness!

Writers of the world: I will check your Elizabethan English FOR FREE at any time, it drives me so nuts.

Superman: The Last Family of Krypton No. 1 - Hey, Elseworlds is back! Hooray! And this is a lovely little story about Jor-El and Lara coming to Earth with their kid! Yay! And of course everything is going to go horribly wrong next issue! Yay!

Sparta, USA No. 6 - Yet another Wildstorm series ends. Will they step up with a new crazy yarn for me to read? Who knows? What I do know is that I was taken off-guard by the end of this one. Hooray for surprises!

Hellboy: The Storm No. 2 - I know that I go on and on about Hellboy and its sibling titles, or at least heavily imply that I could go on and on,  but hot damn. Stuff from maybe a decade ago is paying off in this title right now. There is possibly nothing else out there that encompasses both continuity and progress quite like these series do. Okay, there probably is, but I like this better.

Baltimore: The Plague Ships No. 1 - And speaking of Mike Mignola... I see now that I should never have skipped the Baltimore illustrated novel when it came out. Oh for both the money and time to read everything I want to! But enough whining: whether I have context or not the fact remains that a vampire gets harpooned in this book and that that is never not awesome.

Will You Live To See The "Dawn Of The Gearheads"?

 I didn’t really know how I felt the first time I finished reading the first issue of Scott Morse’s new IDW series Strange Science Fantasy, only that I’d liked it a lot. A second read-through convinced me that I loved it. It feels less like a comic than a piece of unique art that just happens to be in the form of a comic book, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious or off-putting. I’m not saying it’s for everybody—I can almost imagine that, had I been in a different mood when I read it, I might not have cared for it at all—but it most definitely felt like something deeply felt and weirdly personal that had been successfully married to a particular pop sensibility. If that’s not art, then I’m not sure that I know what art is.

 

The first issue of this six-part mini reads like Rebel Without a Cause meets The Road Warrior, as directed by a coked-up Ralph Bakshi and then adapted into an E.C. science fiction comic. In a dystopian drag-racing-obsessed world, a mortally injured gearhead is reborn as The Headlight, an inspiring figure and leader of hot-rodders whose face has been replaced with a helmeted porthole of blazing light. The Headlight and his followers seek to smash the old order and create a new society, enlisting the aid of some technologically tricked-out animals like the “V-Eighp”. Hints of a larger metaphor appear, then are dismissed just as quickly—a guy dressed like a superhero is run down at one point, and The Headlight deals some righteous justice to “the fat cats, those who dined on the muscles of the dreamers”. These blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em asides linger in your consciousness just enough to give the reader a taste of the artist’s own ideas about this stuff, without hanging around long enough to belabor the point.

 

And the art! Oh man, this is one crazy-looking, gorgeous book. Morse’s animation background informs every panel of this book, from the rubbery forms of both the gearheads and their hot rods, to the shocking vibrancy of the colour scheme. There’s even a one-page strip by Paul Pope! On both a narrative level and a visual level, Strange Science Fantasy is a comic that you experience more than you read. You can’t really sit and think about the story or the characters, because, well, there sort of aren’t any. It’s more like listening to a really great song with totally bizarre lyrics, that you then listen to a few more times trying to figure out just what the hell the songwriter is trying to say. You just don’t know why, but you just know you like it. Or you don’t, as the case may be. Like I said at the top, it’s not for everybody, but it was kind of just what I needed at just the right time, I guess. Does that make sense?

 

John Buys Comics, Nation In Shock

I had a moment of panic when I looked over the enormous stack of comics that I hauled home this week. Somehow, the moons had aligned and the spirits of discord had looked the other way and sundry other events (one or two possibly even involving people in the comic book industry) had conspired to put out a hell of a lot of good comics all at once. Would I wear my typing fingers to the bone? How would I manage with just eight fingers?

Let’s watch!

The Man With the Getaway Face

I started reading the Parker novels when the Hunter adaptation came out last year, and if there is one person in the world that should be adapting them like this, it’s Darwyn Cooke. There’s a note at the beginning explaining why he isn’t giving this novel the full book treatment and then he boils the whole thing down into twenty or so pages that tell you everything you need to know but don’t feel like a summary.

Great. Now I can’t wait until October.

Superman No. 701

Hey, this comic! A lot of people are going to be talking about this comic! Heck, a lot are talking about how many people are going to be talking about it. Some common points:

- It’s been done! All-Star Superman, Hitman, Astro City’s Samaritan… all have tackled the issue of the omni-powerful man and his relationship with the common folk. There’s a pretty good chance that they did a better job. Heck, half of the point of Superman is that he’s so human despite being so alien.
- Superman kind of acts like an asshole. Maybe the fact that he seems smug and self-important half the time is a purposeful contrast to later issues, but I don’t know. He reads like he’s a fifteen year old who’s got it all figured out, man.
- Didn’t we just have a year without any Superman comics?

There are certainly more questions that could be raised – why doesn’t Superman just light heroin on fire all the time? Are you sure that he can combine his vision powers like that? Are there going to be a lot of issues featuring Superman walking through the desert or down a back road or something? – but I don’t have it in me. Mostly I want to know who’s idea it was to take Superman, make his comics really fun and interesting and then spend two years sapping all of the joy and punching out of them. If it is one person then they are a monster.

Catalog No. 439 (Burlesque Paraphernalia and Side Degree Specialties and Costumes)

I don’t know if your comic book store carried this, or if any of you are interested in a book that collects a wide selection of bizarre secret society initiation gags that the DeMoulin Brothers company peddled almost a century ago. There are, however, two things that I do know: 1. As soon as electricity became widely available, people began seeing the humour inherent in mildly electrocuting your friends.

2. No idea is entirely original.

I also never knew that having one’s genitals electrified would seem the better of a pair of options, but there you are.

The Bulletproof Coffin No. 2 – I find myself wanting to describe this book in “-esque” terms (Ditko-esque, Philip K Dick-esque, etc) but really, this book is a thing unto itself, which is pretty remarkable considering how densly packed with pop culture artefacts it is. But check out the superheroes that show up in this issue: they’re supposed to have originated in the Golden and Silver Ages and they hold up as such, but there’s nary a pastiche in sight. Neato!

R.E.B.E.L.S. No. 18 – I was a little worried for this title once the extended Starro the Conqueror storyline was over but it looks like Brainiac the first has made a remarkably seamless transition from the Superman books. Now I’m just worried because it’s a book that I like, so frequently a mark of death.

The Unwritten No. 15 – The literary conspiracy that is lurking in the shadows of this book has hatched a plan to capture Wilson Taylor by publishing a terrible fantasy novel under his name, thus luring him out of hiding. My question is: is it wrong for me to be enjoying the terrible cliché-fic so thoroughly? Because I find it both terrible and magnificent in its terribleness.

The Stuff of Legend Vol. II Part I – I’ve read/watched a surprising number of books/comics/movies that feature beloved childhood toys coming to life and roaming about, and I think that I might just be the best of the lot. I’m pretty sure that there is going to be a fantastic payoff at the end of this, something about the relationship between children and their toys. In the meantime, it fulfills two important criteria by being 1. extremely well-written and 2. a treat for the eyes. Also: who knew that a book operating almost entirely on the sepia colour scale could look so… colourful? Rich? Something like that.

Age of Reptiles No. 4 – While I am very sad that this latest miniseries is over, I rejoice in the fact that it contains what is quite possibly the best dinosaur fight in any comic ever. Richard Delgado is the champion of dinosaur comics – I can only hope for another Age of Reptiles series soon.

Daytripper No. 8 – I’m torn! This is such a marvellous comic that the fact that there are only two issues left should be haunting my dreams, yet the end of the series means that I will be able to sit down with the whole thing – hopefully in a big ‘ol softcover collection – and read it in one sitting. I am certain that this issue has seven or eight times more callbacks to prior instalments than I picked up on. Having the earlier issues on hand instead of buried in a box somewhere would be especially nice with this issue, as it’s the first one not to feature main character Brás. Instead, this issue showcases his impact on the lives of the people around him, all of whom we’ve met before. Hfreio

Booster Gold No. 34 – This issue is about one hair away from being completely gratuitous JLI goofiness, but it’s got Blue Beetle, Mister Miracle and Big Barda and they’re all not dead, so I’m willing to forgive.

Orc Stain No. 4 – The problem with this many good comics coming out in one week is that I run out of superlatives. Have I used magnificent yet? No? Orc Stain is magnificent. If you ever think that you might like to borrow money from me, try to time it to a week that this comic is coming out – I’ll probably still say no, but I’ll do it with a smile on my face.

The Sixth Gun No. 1, Officer Downe, Silver Agent No. 1 - I have squandered my time and these three worthy comics must make do with the briefest of reviews. In order: Old West occult action done right, super-pretty super-violence and one of my favourite characters gets to shine in a very fun comic. 

John Buys Comics: Why Doesn't John Remember Last Week's Reviews?

Brevity is once again the order of the day! Uh, not because I’m drunk again, though. No, this time it’s simple procrastination - if I don’t curtail my wordcount I won’t write anything at all.

Captain Long Ears, by Diana Thung

In common with Calvin and Hobbes: a young boy has crazy imagination-fueled adventures with a stuffed 

animal. Crazy space hijinks.

Unique to this book: a compelling and more-accurate-than-usual look at the emotional life of a child, a very cool combination of imagination-adventures and reality. An obsession with poop, including one of my favourite poop jokes of all time (on the last page). An ending that manages to be happy without being sappy. Just terrific on all fronts.

Justice League: Generation Lost No. 2

It’s only the second issue, so I may be completely wrong, but at this point [Generation Lost] looks like it has a far better chance of hauling the DCU out of the rape-and-murder hole that it’s had one foot stuck in for the last few years than its biweekly sibling Brightest Day, if only due to the fact that the latter’s narrative arc (at 10% completion, natch) looks like it’s going to involve things getting bad and then better. All of the returned characters are going to have some terrible trials and tribulations and then emerge triumphant and the mass happy ending is going to change things FO-EVAH.

In contrast, what has happened in Generation Lost so far has been incredibly encouraging. I may just be reading what I want to here, but it looks like Giffen and Winick are actually going to be examining some of the reasons/events behind the darker storytelling trends that have been the norm for a while now. If Max Lord is alive and nobody on Earth including Wonder Woman remembers that she killed him, is she still a murderer? Hell, how does that change the perception of how events played out afterward?

Anyway, nobody was killed with a knife.

Mystery Society No. 1  

You know I love stories of paranormal investigation, and it’s actually kind of awesome that the main character is a smug asshole - it’s an underused heroic archetype! I think that I need to call a SECOND ISSUE OF JUDGEMENT on it, though - right now this is essentially a pile of interesting ideas. It’s going to be how they’re deployed that swings the Like-o-meter one way or the other - you can cram your comic full of as many psychic 1950s teenage girls and skull-masked undead… teenage girls as you want, but by god you’d better come through on some tasty plot or I will... not read no more.

So watch out.

The Brave and the Bold No. 34 - The Legion of Super-Heroes and the Doom Patrol are two of my favourite things of all time. How does mixing them together produce such a tepid and uninteresting comic? Maybe the second part of this story will retroactively make this one better somehow? I command you to wait for my analysis! Bite your nails with tension!

Green Lantern No. 54/ Green Lantern Corps No. 48 - See now, this is what I was talking about. Have most of this portentous stuff in two reasonably self-contained books and I’m kind of okay with it. Also: the triumphant return of Dex-Star, rage-fueled kitty!

War of the Supermen No. 4 - Superman is home! No more military/industrial conspiracies! Whoopee!

Detective Comics No. 865 - Hey, wait. So Vandal Savage is the Biblical Cain, and Cain from Sandman is kind of Cain, and Rage-Entity the Butcher is strongly implied to be Cain… that’s a lot of Cains. But Vandal Savage is also still a caveman? I don’t know how smoothly the two origins jibe.

Various Stuff n' Such

So here I was, all set to write a cranky post about how much I disliked a certain high-profile comic book movie that opened this weekend. But honestly, folks, life’s too short, and I’d rather spend the time gabbing about stuff I enjoy. So with that in mind, here are a few random tidbits of comic booky goodness from last week’s offerings:

 

Other Lives, by Peter Bagge: The Hate-meister returns to cranky form with this original Vertigo graphic novel about four interconnected losers—a writer who despises his racial identity and is haunted by a past act of plagiarism, his fiancée, whose vicarious internet life begins to blur into her real relationships, an online gambling addict desperate to cover up his crumbling domestic life, and a would-be government agent/national hero who lives in his mother’s garage. Fans of Bagge ‘s most famous creation, Buddy Bradley, can draw a straight line to Vlad (Vader) Ryderbeck, the self-loathing, slow-burning, expletive-spewing, booze-swigging antihero at the heart of Other Lives, who discovers that the self-created false identities people hide behind—both online and in real life--are not just a product of the internet era, but in his case at least, a generational affair. Bagge’s rubbery, cross-hatched caricatures may not be for everybody, but there’s truly nothing else in comics like them, and they are perfectly suited to the grotesque lives, both real and imagined, that they depict. The surprisingly violent conclusion is strangely unsatisfying, but the repeated jabs at the characters’ cartoonishly sad-sack lifestyles and the equally ridiculous internet fantasies they retreat into are what stays with you after you’ve finished reading.

 

The Flash #1, by Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul: DC has taken a lot of flack for bringing back Silver Age mainstay Barry Allen—fair enough, considering that most of their current readership grew up reading the adventures of his protégé, Wally West—but here’s the thing; having Allen as the Flash in a new number one issue makes sense because he’s the easiest version of the character to explain to new readers. Hit by lightning, showered by chemicals, Fastest Man Alive. There you go. Sure, he’s got tons of baggage if you start factoring in his death and rebirth, his stint as a married father in the distant future, and all that other crap, but this first issue wisely sidesteps all that, focusing instead on what I hope will set this series apart from the previous run (see what I did there?): the fact that Barry Allen is a police scientist, so he is actually going to be solving mysteries instead of just running around fighting bad guys. Manapul’s art is just as lovely here as it was in his short-lived stint on Adventure Comics, and I hope he’s in it for the long haul. This is a fun, accessible, great-looking debut, with one of those cool two-page teaser ads at the end (like the ones Johns did for Legion of Three Worlds and Sinestro Corps) for an upcoming event called Flashpoint. I have no idea what it could be about, but it looks cool. Let’s hope DC doesn’t water it down with a kajillion crossovers, but who am I kidding? Of course they will.

 

Kill Shakespeare #1, by Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col, and Andy Belanger: I know Johnathan already covered this IDW book and its fascinating shared universe, where the Bard’s most famous creations join forces to destroy him, a few days ago, but I wanted to throw in my two cents as well. This is a very cool, original concept, executed with terrific skill and style. There are a lot of comparisons to be made to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen being thrown around in regards to this series, and that’s a pretty big compliment in my book. The premise may be a bit intimidating to anyone not well versed in Shakespeare, but it’s a lot more accessible than you might think at first. For instance, I haven’t read Richard III, but I recognized the hunchbacked, shriveled-armed monarch as soon as he appeared. You could just look at Kill Shakespeare as a simple adventure story framed by a larger literary backdrop if you like, one with witches and pirates and ghosts, and you’d enjoy it just as much. Belanger’s art is detailed and stylish as well, just as impressive in moments of quiet dread (like Hamlet’s father’s ghost appearing from the mists) as it is in action scenes (such as the first issue’s big set piece, a pirate attack on the boat carrying Hamlet to England). And the creators are Canadian! Really, you have no excuse to miss this. 

John, That Loveable Scamp, Buys Comics

Daytripper No. 5 (of 10)

It's kind of hard to give a recap of this comic, given the way that it's being told, but here's an approximation: Daytripper is kind of the story of the life of a man named Brás. Kind of because the story is being told out of sequence, and also because (and here's where you want to stop reading if you're planning on approaching the trade completely without knowledge) he dies at the end of each issue. There's a lot more that I could lay out for you - about his job and family and the circumstances of his birth and so on - but I think that the thing that I really want to convey is that each issue is a perfect tale of the last day of this particular man's life, with Moon and Bá providing their signature astonishing art (and my fave Dave Stewart on colours). With a bit of rewriting this could be a series about a collection of unrelated men and it would be a delight, but at the halfway mark I can tell that something excellent is going to come of all of this.

There is no question that I am missing things here. I don't even know how to locate my copies of the first four issues, so there's no question of me going back and rereading for comparison, but I have a hunch that there are slight changes occurring in Brás' life story, that it's not merely being cut off at different points along the way but that we are seeing different iterations of him, like his life has been split with a prism. As a result of this, as fantastic as this book is in monthly doses, I reckon that it's going to be incredibly rewarding to read in trade. It's definitely going to enter into my stable of books to be lent to people who get a bit sniffy about super-heroes.

Brightest Day No. 0

I have determined that my biggest mistake with Blackest Night was that I was thinking about it too much.  I guess it was kind of natural that I would ponder it from time to time, since it went on for, like, ever. I just shouldn't have tried to analyze a continuity-heavy event comic, as there is no way to come out ahead in that game. I just have to go with the flow.

And hey, I like this event better than the last one already! It looks like at least half of the characters involved are going to have interesting story arcs and Boston Brand makes a decent narrator, even as Aliveman. And this is, after all, the final act of the whole years-long Lantern story - this is the part of the thing where Geoff Johns historically shines, especially for me. I can't tell you how many times he has won me over with a good ending after making me hate a story's middle.

So I hereby resolve not to overexamine or nitpick this thing until I go crazy with nerdrage. Mr Read and Appreciate For What it is, that's me.

I will however be keeping track of the number of times that characters in [Brightest Day] say "Brightest day." So far: 2.

Doc Savage No. 1

I heard a review of First Wave No. 1 when it came out - I do believe that it was on the Awesomed by Comics podcast - that had as its main negative point the fact that upon reading the comic you had absolutely no clue who anybody involved was. And of course I was ready to scoff, because how could anyone not know Doc Savage or Renny or Monk Mayfair? But then I remembered that Doc Savage hadn't been in anything more prominent than a miniseries or D-movie for longer than my parents have been alive and that I am in fact a giant nerd, especially about this kind of thing.

So it's a good thing that Paul Malmont does such a terrific job of writing backstory and character details into the plot of this comic without breaking the flow - stuff like introducing characters as they practice their specialties or having Doc make smalltalk with two children to keep them calm while rescuing them from a burning building. It's a nice bit of writing, hampered only a little by the somewhat inconsistent art and gigantic manga eyes that everyone has. They... they make me uncomfortable.

As for the backup, well, I know a lot less about the Avenger than Doc, so I'll hold off on shooting my mouth off for a couple of issues. Dude sure does look mean though.

Kill Shakespeare No. 1

Ha ha, I'm a fool. I could have gotten a review copy of this, like two weeks ago and I didn't get around to doing anything long enough for it to slip my mind entirely. Of course, usually when I do that it's a terrible WWE comic or something and I don't care. This time, I straight-up suck.

Fool or no, I recognize a fun comic when I see (and pay cash for, damn it) one, and this is exactly that. I'm about to compare it to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but not in a damning way - there is no imitation here, no squad of the Bard's best and brightest assembled by Falstaff in order to combat the nigh-unstoppable Bowdlerization Army. Rather, this book lives in the same joyful part of the Adventure/Black Humour/Reference Spotting Venn Diagram that League or, say, Fables (and The Unwritten, more and more) does. In other words, it's the kind of book that you appreciate both for its plot and for the skill with which aspects of other stories are being incorporated into this one.

Thus far,  Hamlet has been banished from Denmark, fought pirates and met Richard III, the legendary horseless bastard and possibly my favourite character from Shakespeare. Plus: ghosts, witches, dogs and divers alarums! Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col and Andy Belanger: excellent book. I deeply regret having to pay you for it. Wait...

Turf No. 1 (of 5) - This came out last week and I missed it - so foolish. I bought a lot of damn books this week, though, so I'll wait until issue 2 to gush about it. Tiny review: vampires and aliens and gangsters in Prohibition-era New York. Looks fantastic. The kind of book that takes a long time to read and makes you wish it took longer.

Adventure Comics No. 10 - Did I accidently buy two copies of this? Damn it, I did. CURSE YOU, VARIANT COVERS! CURSE YOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

Action Comics No. 888 - I know I complain about the Project 7734 stuff in the Superman books a lot (note: this is because it is an INSANELY BORING comic book trope), but it's just one aspect of what's been going on for the last year or so, and I've really been enjoying the rest - particularly the stuff with Nightwing and Flamebird. And hey look: this comic is all about those two crazy kids and their crazy bird spirits!

Secret Six No. 20 - When I finished issue 19 of this book, I was pretty sure that the next issue would not feature Catman killing all or some of his team-mates, but I had to admit that the possibility was there. I am so happy about this! Gail Simone, how did you get me to think that maybe you would kill off a portion of your cast like that? Why are you so good at this?