Chapter 77

It’s been a long road since Charlie Campion first fled the Nevada barracks where Project Blue was housed, and for now, things are finally over. Well, probably not finally as in “dead and done forever,” but over insofar as that the current danger is over. A season of rest, if you will.

Finally back home at Boulder, Stu relates the news of what happened in Vegas and subsequently, the deaths of Glen, Ralph and Larry. And while there’ll be more mourning in time, it’s best to feel relieved that Flagg is gone and most likely no one will be bothering the citizens of Boulder for a long, long time. And life, metaphorically, goes on. There’s apparently sixty-one pregnancies in the Free Zone at this time, and Frannie’s been the first to give birth. And while baby Peter’s been fighting with the last traces of the superflu, he’s going to make it.

Everything, for a time will be okay.

Chapter 78

It’s interesting to see that in Stu and the others’ absence from Boulder, that some of the same things have started up all over again. Crime is rising once more, and the new sheriff in charge wants to start arming his men. Brad Kitchner’s gotten the television stations working once more, and more and more people are flowing into the Boulder Free Zone every day.

And while it might make the most sense for the original members of the Free Zone to stay and help guide the community into the future, Frannie and Stu don’t necessarily want that. They’re happy with their friends, but in all fairness, they’d rather light out for the new wilderness. Frannie wants her kid (s) to see where she grew up; Stu doesn’t really care where they go as long they’re together. They’ll come back one day. See Lucy’s new twins grow up and see what Tom Cullen’s gotten up to with his house and pay tribute to those who have lost their lives in the creation of the new world.

And maybe Stu and Fran will come across other straggling communities. Maybe some trying to live in solidarity, maybe some that will run out every outsider unlucky to come across the compound. Maybe there’s others, in the East, in Canada, halfway across the world. Maybe there’s a second chance to do humanity right this time.

A season of rest.

“Do you think…do you think people ever learn everything?”

“I don’t know,” she said at last….

*

Two and a half years ago, I started embarked on the project of rereading my entire library alphabetically. It started as a means to revisit old books I haven’t touched in years, to clean out a few of the books I’ve never even opened, and rediscover some gems I’d either forgotten about or don’t read that often because of the size/the book was falling apart. And looming in the middle of the list was The Stand. I hadn’t picked it up in nearly six years. I remembered the plot points, and all the major players, and would flip to certain pages from time to time when we had the book in at work, but I hadn’t sat down to actually read it in ages.

So I thought I’d do something different with reading it. And that’s when I got the idea to embark on doing a reread blog—I’d seen others tackle their own personal favorite books and thought, “Well, I can do that.”

Well, over a year later, here we are.

I’ve always counted The Stand as being my absolute favorite Stephen King book ever. And it’s still up there as one of my favorites. But breaking it down to chunks does show that it’s not a perfect book as I once thought. And I do think it’s got some really interesting things to say, mainly about America during the time King was writing the novel, but there’s still a worrying reflection as to how some things are today. It’s not a perfect examination of good versus evil, and the lines are still too clear cut of who the good and bad guys are, but our heroes aren’t perfect, and even the bad guys are capable of mercy and goodness at times. I don’t hold this book up as a warning of what could be, but even still, those last few paragraphs…

One day. Maybe it’ll be the hands of a major disaster, a plague or we finally blow up each other, and the survivors are left to pick up the pieces. And then we’ll start over. And move on. Maybe we’ll get it right. Maybe we’ll just blow each other up again.

We don’t know.

*

Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long.

And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.

It’s been a great run, rereading one of my favorite books with everyone here. Thanks to everyone who’s read along and commented (please don’t get mad with me, I do read comments, I just don’t reply all of the time) and reblogged and retweeted the new posts. Thanks to Kevin for letting me chew up space a handful of weeks whenever I got the chance to update the posts. Thanks to my mom for getting me into Stephen King in the first place.

I don’t know what my next project will be, but in the meantime, you can find my original writing on Smashwords, or follow me on Twitter and Tumblr. (Warning, I fangirl a lot.) You can also follow my library reread progress/general word-vomiting about books on Goodreads (and there will be a forthcoming general review of The Stand). Additionally, watch this space. (Depending on how my schedule works out because this was supposed to be up a lot earlier…)

Thanks again, everyone!

Chapter 74

It should be worth noting that we’ve got another couple of long-haul chapters at this point. Most other authors (or editors, for the matter) would have probably taken everything from Chapter 73 to 75 and chopped it up into more manageable sections. Oh, sure, there’s section breaks, but it is kinda imposing to have a nearly forty-page chapter, especially when there’s so much stuff going on at once. (On the other hand, you have someone like James Patterson, who seems to think a scene change means a new chapter. I’ve had people tell me with a straight face that having a book with 200 chapters must mean he’s a good writer, and I really struggle not to laugh in their faces.)

My point is, there’s a lot of ground to cover here. Sometimes having long chapters works in a book’s favor, and with something like The Stand where chapter length is largely “however long it needs to be,” it does work really well. But tackling the book in one go (or even in periodic updates like this), sometimes the haul does feel long.

Anyway.

Our focus is solely on Stu and Kojak at this point. One of the things that I do love about this section (and the chapter that follows) is that King illustrates one of the things that tend to get ignored in classic quest stories—the journey back. Using the ur-example of Tolkien, you never really get the sense that the journey back to the Shire is full of any hardship or problems that the hobbits run into. (The Scourge of the Shire doesn’t count.) Sure, it would be easy for Stu to run into Tom Cullen and then they make it back with plenty of time before winter kicks in. But I like that King doesn’t ignore the fact that Stu has a broken leg and how much that’s going to impede him on the journey back to Boulder. I like that even though Stu is one of the good guys and that he didn’t make it to Vegas, it doesn’t mean that Stu’s safe from death.

It was the final irony. He had the flu, or something very like it.

It’s stuff like this that make me really appreciate how King plots and sets up his plot points. Say what you want about his characters or writing (or even the plots and summations themselves), but when he pulls off a really good plot, he does it spectacularly. Again, Chapter 38. Not only is that chapter a great piece of world-building, explaining that not everyone who survives the super-flu is going to play some role in the larger events, but it also reminds us that infections and diseases are still out there and they’re still dangerous. Sure, Nick went through it, but he survived until he needed to.

Anyway, back to the plot at hand. Stu prepares himself for the eventual death by writing one last note to Frannie and giving it to Kojak to take back to Boulder when it happens. There’s really not a lot that happens in this first chunk that’s not confirming what we already know: Stu hears the bomb going off in Vegas, and he confirms it with his own eyes. He knows that it’s going to take a miracle to keep him alive at this point, because anyone coming from the West probably isn’t going to be much of a help.

(Question, was everyone involved in Flagg’s operation at Vegas at the time? How far does fallout effect the surrounding Vegas area? I’m not asking for The Stand 2: Vengeance of Vegas, but I’m curious.)

And then a dark figure appears in the distance…

“Who is it?” [Stu] called. “Who is that there?”

“Well, it’s Tom Cullen, that’s who, my laws, yes…”

Tom and Stu trade notes on their various companions and their fates (Stu wisely waits to tell Tom about Nick’s death, although Tom takes it a lot better than one would expect), and then get down to the business of getting Stu to safety. Seeing as Stu can’t walk, and it’s about sixty miles away.

Again, even though Stu and Tom do eventually find the right car, I like that it’s not the first or second car that they come across. And even the ones that are right kind of car—they’re looking for a manual transmission—there’s still problems with the cars they find. Flats, dead batteries, etc. It’s not like God’s sitting there thinking, “Oh, my acolytes need to get to Green River before one of them dies. HERE HAVE A BRAND NEW CAR THAT WORKS PERFECTLY.” The car that they do come across is an old 1970 Plymouth, but it works well enough to get our New Intrepid Trio to a motel to rest up.

(Okay, the conveniently empty hotel rooms the three shack up in, that seems a little too easy. I’m pretty sure there’d still be a body or two hanging around. )

Chapter 75

Now that Stu’s gotten into a warm (ish) place and has time to rest, instead of fighting for his life against the elements, he’s taken a turn for the worse. It was bound to happen sooner or later, but probably better now than in the woods and alone.

Again, this whole chapter is a nice parallel to the one way earlier on when Tom and Nick first met. Tom’s more understanding that Stu’s sick and is going to die soon if he’s not sheltered and taken care of. It is a little…convenient that so many camping supplies and food are readily found by Tom and Kojak—for as much as I was saying that hardships are largely ignored on the journeys back—but there’s a point where you do have to take the plot on its own terms. Stu’s already spent three journeys with hardships, why not have the one time where it seems like he’s going to die be a little easier on him.

Through the help of ghost!Nick, Tom finds all of the medicine that Stu needs and takes it back to him. Again, one of the things that I really like here is that King doesn’t ignore the fact that all Stu needs is bed rest and he’ll be fine. What also helps with this chapter is the timing. Winter is fast coming to the West, and Stu’s got to get better so that they can travel as much as they can before things get worse. (Speaking as someone who lives in a mainly temperate, nonmountainous region, I liked that it’s acknowledged how fast winter happens out in Colorado and Utah, and that the lack of as many people means that avalanches and snow drifts are even more dangerous than they normally are.)

Stu manages to get well, and he and Tom restart their journey home. In early November, they shack up in Grand Junction’s Holiday Inn and prepare to shack up for a long, long winter.

I think the great thing about this chapter, for as long as it feels, is that King illustrates how boring life is for the two. Sure, Stu and Tom have their various ways to keep busy: movies, Stu’s physical therapy, the Moon Base Alpha project Tom creates, but the inevitable is still there. They’re going to have to leave when the time is right or spend all winter with a growing sense of dread of what’s happening back in Boulder and with Frannie’s baby.

(It should also be noted that being cooped with people in one place, no matter how big it is, is going to get tense as time goes on. As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on a rooftop deck at the beach house I’m currently staying at with my extended family. As I told them, I’m not blowing them off, I just need a few hours to work by myself without dealing with the Twenty Questions.)

This section, with Tom and Stu in Grand Junction , doesn’t exactly drag the book or feels unnecessary, but really gives the right amount of sense of how boring and tedious the waiting is. Yeah, it’s probably easier if Tom and Stu wait until spring and things are easier, but…

…”What I mean is, would it be worth it to you to take a chance?”

It was decided as simply as that. They left Grand Junction on the last day of November.

One of the harder things about writing stories in a post-apocalyptic or isolated setting is making the passage of time feel believable. To use one of my favorite examples, Lost—we went three seasons before getting a solid confirmation of what the specific date was in “The Constant.” And it was kind of shocking to realize that only a few months had passed in the show’s universe. Sure, there was a loose timeline that the writers had given, but to hear the confirmation in the early spring of 2007 that it was only Christmas of 2004 was sobering, given how much had happened in those three months. (Also, I really love that episode. I really, really need to do a Lost rewatch one of these days.)

Here, King’s a little better with the dates, as he’s the omniscient narrator. He knows what the date is, Stu and the others have some good grasp of what the day is, but it’s not like they have smart phones or really anything else concrete to tell them what day it is. All they can go off on is when Stu left Boulder (or when Tom left Vegas, depending on who’s counting) and working from there.

Of course, when we get a significant date, it’s Christmas. Given the point of the narrative, I’m really not all that surprised but this scene works really well. I do love the scene of Stu going out to find presents for Tom and Kojak, but it’s really made all the more meaningful by this:

“You gave me my Christmas present early..”

“But you did, you know. The best on of all. I’m still alive. I wouldn’t be, if it wasn’t for you.”

It’s mentioned a few pages earlier that Stu and Tom are currently camped out above a traffic jam, and one with probably a lot of dead, decaying flash-frozen bodies. I think this is a better affirmation of how life goes on after such a devasting tragedy and loss of life (not just the super-flu, but all the lives lost in the name of Flagg and Mother Abagail); that these two characters are alive and they’re alive now and whatever happens in the future happens but it doesn’t matter. And given what you want to say about Christmas and its placement on the calendar, I think that putting that scene here is a reminder of what the holiday has mutated into meaning—that even in the darkest moments of winter, there’s a ray of hope.

“He never dies,” Tom said. “He’s in the wolves, laws, yes. The crows. The rattlesnake. The shadow of the owl at midnight and the scorpion at high noon….”

Tom didn’t answer.

The weather manages to hold out for a few days, and the two slowly make their way across the Loveland Overpass. They don’t know what’s waiting for them when they get back to Boulder, but they just need to make a little further. The snowmobiles give out, Tom and Stu keep going. Because they’re nearly home. And sure enough, a few days later…

“Stu!” the sentry yelled back. A black shape materialized out of the snow, slipping and sliding as it ran toward them. “I just can’t believe it—“

(I’d like to note—for the record, I’ve been skipping over a lot—it is interesting that the increased threat of Flagg and the disappearance and extremely likely death of the majority of the Free Zone Committee that Boulder would have graduated to posting sentries. Just in case. I do like the minor standoff that Stu has here, it’s not that Billy Gehringer isn’t going to believe it’s Stu, but….look when your opponent is a shapeshifter, you’re not taking chances.)

Despite the joyous return of Stu and Tom (and Kojak, let’s not completely forget about the dog), all is not well in the town of Boulder. Frannie has had the baby…except that it’s also contracted the superflu. Because only one of the baby’s parents was immune. (*snort* Biology does not work that way. Sorry.) But there still may be a chance for the kid.

“Stu, where are you going?”

“To the hospital,” Stu said. “To see my woman.”

Chapter 75

As much as I have bitched and chewed out Frannie in the course of this reread, it’s really hard not to feel sorry for her here. Her whole family is dead. One of her few remaining friends not only betrayed her but also killed the people she was starting to care about. Her boyfriend went off on a suicide mission. And her last remaining link to the old world, her baby Peter, is probably dying and he isn’t more than a few weeks old.

So yeah. I do feel sorry for her. I don’t really take a lot of pleasure in giving characters endless tragedies just because I don’t like them. I don’t think anyone deserves to go through what’s happening with Frannie right now.

“Hey Frannie.”

In her dream she saw that Stu had come back. He was standing in the doorway of her room, wearing a gigantic fur parka. Another cheat. But she saw that the dream-Stu had a beard. Wasn’t that funny?

As I said earlier on in this post, sometimes after going through so much hardship, you need a break. Even when things are still rough.

“Stu!” she cried. “Are you real? If you’re real, come here!”

He went to her then, and held her.

Chapter 71

Oh, Randall Flagg, what’s to become of you? You killed your wife, your men are slipping, and you’re losing your magic. You don’t think that there’s really anything left to help you now?

Whatever else might have happened, the Eye had not abandoned him.

We’ve spent a lot of time in this last section detailing the crumbling of Las Vegas, and largely from the perspective of Flagg and his inner circle. (Well, Flagg and Lloyd anyway. And Nadine. Inner triangle, if you will.) And while we left Part 2 with the intrepid gang of Stu, Larry, Ralph and Glen (and Kojak), we really haven’t gotten any update of their progress across the American West. Aside from vague statements of “They’re coming for you!”

So having this short interlude with Flagg here is actually kinda well done to integrate the Boulderites (Bouldies? I’ve just realized that I may need a better name for them aside from the citizens of Boulder.) and their final journey. Because it gives Flagg some time to prepare for them. Yeah, he knew that they were going to come for him (when, he wasn’t so sure, but it was going to happen eventually), but this gives him a better grasp of what to prepare for when they finally stroll into Vegas.

He would assemble every person in Vegas and make them file past and look. He would have photographs taken, would print fliers, have them sent out to L.A. and San Francisco and Spokane and Portland.

Five heads. He would put the dog’s head up on a pole, too.

Chapter 72

We’re now firmly back with the Boulderites from this point onward. It’s been a week and a half since they left following Mother Abagail’s death and Vegas is still about 400 miles off.

One of the things I like about this section is that we do get see the results of Flagg’s workings as the Boulderites trek across the country. For example, one of the bodies they stumble across is none other than the Kid, now dubbed the “Wolfman” by Larry. (I DIDN’T REALIZE THAT IT WAS THE KID UNTIL NOW. I HAVE NO IDEA WHY THIS HAS NEVER STUCK IN MY HEAD BEFORE.) And then they come across Harold’s body. Even though there’s really not a moment where the four of them stop and say “Oh so that’s what happened,” I like that King does discuss that the image of Harold and the Kid do haunt them…and it becomes increasingly more apparent to them what Flagg can do.

(Okay, tangenting time, and remember it’s been years since I’ve read this all the way through—but wouldn’t it be great if Flagg would have gone to Larry in Vegas and said “You should have chosen me instead of the old woman?” Yeah, I know it’s not even remotely subtle but man that would be an awesome comeback.)

Since we’re stuck with Glen Bateman, Anthropology Professor! for the next four hundred miles or so, and since the others really don’t want to talk about what’s waiting for them, instead, let’s have a discussion of vision quests and that the human brain is a Delco Battery. (Ralph’s phrasing, not mine.) This isn’t the last time King talks about vision quests in his works (there’s the smokehole scene in IT that really gets into this line of thinking as well), but this hits the nail on the head a little too well. Yeah, we all know that the Boulderites are being pushed by a higher power, and spiritual cleansing, yeah, I got it. But unless if you take out there whole supernatural angle, I really don’t like Glen’s argument that stripping a person of their ‘accessories’ will lead them on some great spiritual revelation. (And let’s bring up the idea of an updated film version of The Stand¬—who wants to bet that Glen would have a massive rant in here about upgraded technology and how bad it is for us? *raises hand*

….yeah, so I don’t really like Glen Bateman whenever he does this, because I just end up rolling my eyes.)

I’m not particularly in favor of yet another chapter full of navel-gazing and philosophizing—where are Flagg’s men? I’m pretty sure that they’re probably on their way as the Boulderites are going on about vision quests and how animal crackers have a lemony afterflavor.

One of the things that I really appreciate in post-apocalyptic works is the acknowledgement that nature’s taking over again, and that it can be a hazard for the characters. So far in The Stand, the most that we’ve seen of nature reclaiming the land is more animals roaming freely. But it also interesting how very few writers tend to remember that in the now-isolated parts of civilization, stuff like a washed-out road can’t just be simply avoided with a number of detours.

[Stu’s] chest was over the edge when the knob of outcropping his left foot was on suddenly disappeared. He felt himself begin to slide. Larry grabbed for his hand, but this time he missed his grip. Stu grabbed the outjutting edge of the turnpike, and it came off in his hands. He stared at it stupidly for a moment as the speed of his descent began to increase.

King likes to throw in curveballs, especially when the stakes are this high. You know that not everyone’s going to get out alive during the confrontation with the Big Bads. (Again, see IT, where it wasn’t just killing off a character right before the final showdown, but HEY LET’S KILL OFF ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS IN THE FIRST FIFTY PAGES. HOW YOU LIKE THAT.)

“How bad, Stu?”

…”I figure I’ll be walking again in about three months,” he said.

Well, shit. The rules say that they have to walk all the way to Vegas, but then there’s nothing to say that they can’t drag a guy on a sled or something the rest of the way there. Larry is rightfully pissed off that Stu’s sending them off so that he can die out on the side of the Utah State Highway alone, on nothing more than just an old woman’s dying wish.

May I point out that I kinda really like that even at this point in the grand scheme of things, Larry is still extremely doubtful of the larger supernatural consequences? But I like how it’s taken here—the outcropping of dirt that Stu loses his grip on does feel more like the consequences of nature, rather than some ~mysterious~ goings-on.

So it’s kind of fitting that Stu sits Larry down to tell him that “No, you’re the one in charge now.” Larry, who’s been so vehemently trying to save himself, trying desperately not trying to get involved, and yet here he is, on his way to a death mission in Vegas. I think if in any other writer—or even if King had decided to make this less of an grand epic—Larry is the focus character. He’s the one who changes the most since the broken-down, not-quite-a-rock star from back in Chapter Five. And he’s still fighting whatever destiny has in store for him.

“We’ll come back for you, if we can. You know it.”

Larry went up the bank quickly and joined the other two. They stood and waved down. Stu raised his hand in return. They left. And they never saw Stu Redman again.

Chapter 73

As Our Intrepid Now-Band-of-Three carries on to Vegas, it’s extremely evident how much of a toll leaving Stu behind takes on them. It’s one thing to continually dodge the fact that “We’re all going to die at the end of this, so let’s talk about something else,”; it’s another when you know that you’ve left your comrade-in-arms to die alone.

Except that Stu’s not alone—Kojak decided to stay behind! Good dog! So you know, at least Stu won’t die as quickly out there. He can at least get fire and food for the time being.

After five days of traveling and two nights of Larry getting prophetic dreams, the Intrepid Band finally comes across a road blockade.

“Accident?” Glen asked.

“His men,” Larry said.

Well, we all knew it was coming, and probably this way—bring them to Flagg instead of just gunning them down on the road like the Judge. (JUUUUDGE.) There’s eight of Flagg’s men waiting for them, and it’s pretty useless to even try running.

“My name is Paul Burlson,” he said, “and by virtue of the power vested in me, I arrest you and order you to come with me.”

At the Vegas jail, everyone’s separated to be questioned. Larry’s taken into a cell and questioned by Barry Dorgan about why Boulder would send their spies. Of course this is all a show. Everyone—even if they don’t know the specifics—knows why the three have shown up here.

The next morning, Glen Bateman gets a surprise visit in the form of Randall Flagg himself, accompanied by Lloyd Henreid. And since Flagg knows that Glen’s an old man, he’ll strike a deal: Glen can go, in comfort. He just needs to beg Flagg first.

“I tell you what you do. Why don’t you find a nice big sandpile, get yourself a hammer, and pound all that sand right up your ass?”

For as much as I’ve bitched about Glen and the rolling of my eyes whenever he goes off on philosophy rants, there’s this moment.

This isn’t about having titanium-plated balls, this is just telling the Big Bad what he really is. For all that Flagg used to be able to do, it’s not worth any of that now. Flagg is a megalomaniac losing his grasp on power, and everyone knows that.

And for his trouble, Glen Bateman gets shot by Lloyd. Which may end up being a better death for him than what’s waiting for Larry and Ralph in the morning.

Two large cages stood on the back of the two flatbeds..Attached to each hitch was a heavy steel towing chain. The chains snaked across the lawn of the Grand, and each ended just inside the squarish holes in the cages.

At the end of each chain there dangled a single steel handcuff.

D: D: D:

Larry and Ralph are taken to the cages the next morning by Burlson and the self-described ‘Rat-man’ as all of Vegas gathers around. Flagg does the honors of reading the charges, including accusing the Boulderites of what happened out at Indian Springs. And thank God that there are people in the crowd who know that that specific accusation is utter bullshit. Amongst other things.

“This ain’t right!” Whitney yelled. “You know it ain’t!”

Oh, Whitney. You and the others should have run when you first thought about it. Maybe it wouldn’t have bought Larry and Ralph this extra couple of minutes, but you wouldn’t be in this situation right now.

Flagg manages to summon one last big show of magic and burns Whitney in front of the crowd.

In a thundering voice, Flagg challenged them. “Is there anyone else here who disagrees with my sentence? If so, let him speak now!”

…

And again [Larry] caught that puzzling name tossed from mouth to mouth, never clear, never all of one piece: Man..Can Man…Trash…Trashy…

Someone was coming through the crowd, as if in answer to the dark man’s challenge.

The crowd mercifully beats it to all hell (btw, Angie Hirschfield took Dinny and beat the hell out of town the night before. I NEED TO BELIEVE THIS, OKAY?) as Trashcan makes his triumphant return to Vegas, nuke in tow.

(GAH)

Poor Trash. In all of his wanting to be happy, finally finding someone who cared about him and what he could do, it is heart-breaking in a way when he screams that Flagg’s left him. And at this one moment, when everything was going to be okay again, Trash still thinks he failed.

And then

‘Larry looked up. He saw the ball of electricity Flagg had flicked from the end of his finger. It had grown to a tremendous size….

And the thing in the sky did look like a hand.’

From where they all started—LA, Indiana, Oklahoma, nowhere—it ends in Vegas. It had to end at some point. Larry and Ralph knew that not only surviving left them with a greater purpose, but it also meant that they were living on borrowed time as well. And for Donald Erwin, the Trashcan Man, he’s able to fulfill his true purpose of bringing forth a great fire.

And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.

(We’re in the home stretch folks!)

Magneto kneels before the grave of Charles Xavier and ponders again how one man could have made such a difference in the world, and if giving up everyone he knows and loves to change reality is truly worth it.  Bishop tells him he’s wasting their time, and I can’t help but agree.  How many times do we have to hear this?

Thankfully, some Infinites, Vanisher, and then finally Apocalypse show up to start a fight.  Magneto quickly tears apart the Infinites, and Vanisher disappears, leaving what would seem to be a big tussle between two powerhouses.  But mostly it’s just Apocalypse beating the crap out of Magneto while dumping some exposition on us.  I’m teasing, but actually it is pretty neat how through this we find out that Magneto did build Asteroid M in this reality, and how he once crashed it into earth trying to take out Apocalypse but failed and lost half his mutant powers in the process.  It helps to make this reality seem more real and less of the temporary event that it actually is.

Magneto is all set to kill himself in an effort to also take out Apocalypse, but Apocalypse reveals that he’s sent Vanisher after Nanny and baby Charles, so Magneto surrenders instead.  So that’s how he ended up captured when we saw him in those previous issues I covered.  Meanwhile, we see Vanisher thoroughly vanquished by an armed to the teeth Nanny, and the gleeful look on baby Charles’ face when Nanny pulls out all her guns is totally adorable.

Quicksilver’s team of X-men return to the mansion to find Magneto and Bishop gone and Vanisher dead.  While the others look for Nanny and Charles, Quicksilver speeds over to Heaven to talk to Angel.  Angel informs him that they sent Bishop and Magneto to two different locations, and since Bishop is essential to the plan they’ve all been trying to fulfill to fix the universe, he’s going to have to let his father stay captured for awhile to go rescue him.

Bishop is being tortured by the Madri who put the Shadow King inside his head to find out what he knows.  The Shadow King is thoroughly confused by the alternate reality he sees there.  Abyss is also there, mostly just  being snarky awesome as he likes to do.  Quicksilver’s team arrives to where they are keeping Bishop, and they split up.  Storm goes to save Bishop directly, while Quicksilver and Banshee go in search of Jamie Madrox to stop the Madri.

It turns out poor Jamie has been locked up in a cell, and he’s been divided so many times that there isn’t much left of his mind.  He’s not controlling the Madri at all, it was Sinister and Beast who made them that way.  He begs for the two men to kill him, but Quicksilver finds he cannot let yet another innocent soul die.  Abyss comes in and interrupts them, informing them that Storm and Bishop are being outnumbered by the Madri and will die soon.  Quicksilver deliberates while Banshee makes a decision.

He dives head first into Abyss’ chest, screaming all the way, letting go as hard as he can to tear Abyss apart with the vibrations.  Quicksilver mourns his friend while Jamie Madrox tells him he must go rescue Storm and Bishop while he can – Jamie has just enough energy left in him that he will take the Madri back.  Doing so kills him, but it does allow Storm and Bishop to escape from the collapsing building.

As the three X-men return to the mansion, characters from Astonishing X-men, X-Calibre, Generation Next, and Gambit and the X-ternals also return, their story lines wrapped up and ready for the climax that is X-men Omega.  It basically spoils what happens in those last three that we haven’t read yet, so let’s wait to recap these moments.

Writing all that out makes me realize just how much really happens in these two issues.  It’s definitely meant to be the large climax of this crossover, saving all but the biggest moments for the finale.  We’re getting close to the end.

Havok still hates his brother and plans to get rid of him, and even having Cyclops save his life from a rebelling mutant grizzly bear – bengal tiger hybrid that Beast created isn’t changing that fact.  At the same time Jean is sneaking back into the facility to find Sinister, because she doesn’t know he’s gone.  When Cyclops sees her we get a flashback sequence that shows us what happened when she was captured many years ago.  She strongly refused to join Apocalypse’s side no matter what they offered her, and it was that strong spirit of hers that made Scott question what he was doing and whether he should be following orders so blindly.  He was set to help her escape the complex when Logan showed up to rescue her, and it was Logan attacking first that resulted in the fight that made Cyclops lose an eye and Logan lose a hand.

Back in the present both Jean and Cyclops are now tied up by Beast who is of course trying to run experiments.  Jean is powerful enough to fight against the constraints he put on her, and she also flings off Cyclops’ visor to help finish the deal and get them both free.  She tells him of the Human High Council’s plan to nuke New York, and they both agree to set about freeing as many prisoners from the pens they can before that happens.  To do so, they need to take out the six telepathic brains that are lulling the prisoners.  On the way they run into the Bedlam Brothers, who decide this evil stuff is for the birds and they might as well help them out.

Their plan is successful, though Jean is largely exhausted from knocking out the brains, they are at least able to get the prisoners moving.  Beast is almost taken out by the creatures he’s made in his experiments, but he’s still quick and agile and even throws in a “Oh my stars and garters” before throwing them into his primordial soup and making an escape.  Havok tracks down his brother and Jean, and the two brothers fight, resorting to physical violence after it is once again pointed out that their powers don’t hurt each other.  Cyclops knocks his brother out and decides not to kill him even if it means he’ll track them down later, because he’s tired of killing.  Havok eventually wakes up and vows to finish this once and for all.

Elsewhere, after both Karma and Scarlett (who is now pregnant with Havok’s baby) are exposed as spies, Apocalypse sends some of his men after Angel to shut down his club and take him in.  While the club is shut down, Angel makes a quick getaway thanks to a flamethrower and an empty elevator shaft.

I was genuinely surprised to find that the relationship between Scott and Jean here is actually pretty heartfelt and touching.  Their reasons for getting together feel more true and romantic than I’ve seen a lot of other places.  They’re not necessarily in love, per se, but Jean has inspired Scott to be a better man, and she is able to recognize the good in him despite where he is in life.  It’s downright sweet.

Beyond that story development there’s also a ton of action here, and it helps keep the story moving.  The constant battles feel a lot like the final climax of an action film, where the stakes are high and people reveal what side they are really on.  For a series that started off boring me to death, this one ended strong.

Chapter 67

The Walkin Dude was back in Vegas.

SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT.

At least Lloyd has the smarts not to go straight to Flagg when he shows up; first, Lloyd’s too busy hunting down Tom Cullen, and secondly, well…after seeing what Nadine looks like, Lloyd knows a lot better than to intrude on Flagg. And anyway, even despite the fact that Flagg knows everything, Lloyd’s smart enough to get his ass covered first before talking to the big boss.

We’ve seen the ins-and-outs of Flagg’s operation, but the heart has always been Lloyd and a handful of others that he’s picked out. (Namely Whitney Hogan.) And now we’re seeing how deeply this runs with Paul Burlson, another higher-up in charge of the census list. And the “red-list.” Oh, Lloyd, you didn’t know about the red list? Because, y’know, you’re such good buddies with Flagg himself, you should have known about it.

And more bad news—Tom’s split. (Well, we knew that already, carry on.) Lloyd figures out that since Tom’s not quite right in the head, they ought to be able to catch up with him and string Tom up fairly quickly. And after that, everything should be fine, they get to blow up Boulder, and everyone in Vegas is happy under the watchful eye of Randall Flagg. And prepare for war with Eurasia.

Somewhere inside [Lloyd] a door had opened, letting in a cool breeze of fear. Flagg had screwed up. And Flagg was capable of distrusting Lloyd Henreid. And that was baaad shit.

And then Flagg calls him up.

So, Nadine—gah. We’ve only heard about one other person who’s been made catatonic in the presence of Flagg, a lawyer named Strellerton who made the huge mistake of thinking that Flagg was going to put his tail between his legs and listen to some ‘big-shot’ about how to run things. Nadine just lurking in the background while Lloyd and Flagg are discussing Indian Springs is just so completely unsettling and the description of how she acts. It comes off at first as just a minor detail to further the unsettling aspect, but dear God it works.

Oh, and it doesn’t help that Flagg is pissed. I recently finished Under the Dome for the first time (1. For a thousand pager, it’s actually a nicely-paced read and really good; 2. omg can’t wait for the miniseries), and one of the few things that made the villain of that book terrifying was how quickly he was able to go from smiling politician to “I am going to fuck your shit up so hard.” At least Jim Rennie never had phenomenal cosmic powers. (Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone is another King villain like that; I’ve actually said that Stillson’s the most terrifying to me because he’s actually possible.) Flagg does have the phenomenal cosmic powers. And they have failed him. He knows there’s another spy out there, he doesn’t know how Boulder managed to keep it from him, but by God is he going to hunt down the guy and make an example out of him.

“The third spy—“

“If I’ve got it right, he’s a friend of a guy named Nick Andros.”

Lloyd? Dying in the prison would have been the best thing for you. I know it was torture, but compared to what’s going to happen, it’s the more preferable choice.

Flagg screamed: “And you sat there and talked about Indian Springs? I ought to throw you out that window!”

(Ah, to be fair, Flagg, you brought up Indian Springs first and Lloyd didn’t want to piss you off any further and I’m not helping here, am I?)

And you know how I said the fact that Flagg is able to change moods so quickly is some damn unsettling? He offers Lloyd a drink and tells him exactly what they’re going to do: get the helicopters. Find Cullen. And don’t worry about Trash—Flagg will take care of him when the time is right.

Lloyd got the call from Stan Bailey at Indian Springs fifteen minutes later…

“It was the Trashcan Man,” Stan said. “He went hog-wild. Jesus Christ knows what else he’s wired up to explode out here.”

BACK AT THE MGM GRAND. Flagg’s been told of what’s happened at Indian Springs and is plotting to take care of all this other business once he kills Tom Cullen. (First, killing Trashcan. Second, killing Lloyd.) This is his world and no one is going to cross him.

(I will like to point out here that King does at least acknowledge the fact that, no, America is not the last bastion of humanity in the post-Captain Trips world, and yes, there could be other men like Flagg out there pulling the same shit. It’s obviously not really explored in detail here, but it’s something to muse over. Also, I kinda want to see how a global plague does affect other countries and how the survivors cope.)

“They’re coming…they’re coming and they’ll kill you like a chicken-stealing weasel.”

“No,” [Nadine] said indifferently. “They’re almost in Utah now. They’ll be here soon. And they’ll stamp out like a disease.”

As I pointed out a few paragraphs above, God is Nadine unsettling. This is also adding to my theory that Nadine’s the deciding pawn in everything because she manages to break Flagg so hard by pointing out that hubris is, indeed, a bitch.

Then she was gone, plummeting straight down with her toes pointed toward the earth, her gown billowing up her neck and over her face in drifts. She didn’t scream.

MEANWHILE, OUTSIDE OF LAS VEGAS. Tom Cullen is on the move and now he knows that he’s going to have to keep moving and being more vigilant. Because Nick tells him in a dream of what’s going on. (Because even though the remaining pilots at Indian Springs have died, doesn’t mean that Flagg’s going to stop, now is he?) So Tom presses on, reaching God’s Finger and continuing his way home to his house and friends.

Chapter 68

Oh, how history repeats itself! Trashcan Man was once again being broiled alive in the devil’s frying pan—but this time there was no hope of Cibola’s cooling fountains to sustain.

*places on the English major cap*

Redemption is a pretty big theme in Stephen King’s works—it does come up again and again in different forms. (Forgive me, I just reread like a dozen of his books in a row; just bear with me here.) And for obvious reasons, The Stand full of redemptive moments, especially in the last third here. We’ve already had Harold’s redemptive arc—as tragic as it is; Larry and Nadine are going to get theirs, but all of their redemptions are towards the good side.

Trashcan is the interesting example here because he wants his redemption, and we all know he’s seeking it in the wrong place. But after the events of Indian Springs, Trashcan knows he’s fucked up big time. Maybe he doesn’t understand just how badly he’s screwed (no really Trash if you died now, that’s a good thing), but he knows that he is not going to be delivered to whatever Promised Land Flagg has cropped up.

Could there be redemption for him? The dark man might know. Trashcan did not.

Again, here’s the thing that makes Trashcan so completely tragic: he’s so damaged to the point that not only is there no way anyone (or anything) is going to redeem Trash on an earthly level. You want to pity him and feel a lot of sympathy for Trash, but if he walked up to you, burn and radiation scars, let’s be honest, you wouldn’t want to be near the guy. And when he goes on about the fires, it’s all very uncomfortable for everyone involved.

(Also, take a shot because hey, overt Biblical symbolism of walking the desert is overt!)

Given that what we know what’s been going on back in Vegas and all of Flagg’s plans basically going pear-shaped, it is a little surprising that Flagg hasn’t just randomly shown up and given Trashcan a random heart attack or made him self-immolate or something else horrifying and yet strangely creative. But then, I also don’t think that Flagg really does care about Trash—he’s an end to some means, and fuck, if Trash wants to go around the desolated US blowing shit up, Flagg does not give a fuck about what Trash does. If he dies, he dies; if some other little community out in the wilderness gets it, eh, that’s one less thing Flagg has to worry about. And even though that incident at Indian Springs was essentially Trash’s big fuckup, it’s also pretty certain that Flagg thinks “Eh, we’ll just train more.” And Trash either doesn’t notice or he just wipes it from his mind until someone says something that triggers him. The journey through desert isn’t just Trash trying to find redemption; it’s him shitting himself because he’s just lost the only “friends” he’s ever had.

Below that was a yellow-and-black emblem that showed three triangles pointed downward.

Trashcan Man laughed like a child and clapped his hands in the stillness.

I stand completely by my affirmation that Trashcan is the most pitiable character in this entire book. The things that he’s done are horrifying, but when you know what his life’s been like and how lonely and tormented he’s been, you can’t help but feel sorry for him.

Chapter 69

This is probably going to be a really problematic discussion, but it doesn’t hurt to talk about it (because YAY relevance): the people on the losing side who didn’t really know what they were getting into or there’s some sort of loyalty involved or just didn’t know. You see a lot more of this with World War 2 narratives, where there’s at least one Axis Power soldier who’s been pressed into service but he doesn’t really believe in the cause. (It’s actually a major character point in The Book Thief, to which the author has said that it’s kind of the point of that whole book.) Stateside, we have the romanticism of the Civil War and well, yes, slavery and the Confederacy were bad but the noble Southern gentlemen who fought that war didn’t believe in slavery! They did it because their families expected it of them! Because it’s their state and they will fight for it! And most of them deserted because they didn’t believe in fighting for a cause they disagreed with! Yeah, hi, my sister the Civil War nerd would like to have some words with you. (To this day, my sister has never seen Gone With the Wind because “I would be screaming at it the whole time.” )

I bring all of this up because of Lloyd and Whitney’s conversation. Whitney knows that what Flagg’s doing isn’t right, and he’s gotten in too deep and might as well cut and run while the big guy is distracted. It’s what a lot of people in Vegas have been doing. And if Flagg manages to succeed, well, maybe Whitney and his crew will be able to have a few months of somewhat peace before Flagg takes care of them. And Lloyd? He really doesn’t want to. Not that he’s just afraid of what Flagg could do to him, or that he owes Flagg anything, but because Flagg makes him feel power. And screw if Lloyd’s letting go of that. If Whitney Hogan and his friends want to cut and run so be it. Lloyd’s not going to feel sorry if and when Flagg finds them all hiding out in South America. Lloyd knows where his place is.

“You’re going to stick?”

“To the very end, Whitney. His or mine. I owe him that.”

Chapter 70

…[Trashcan] was going to get that bomb up. Somehow he was going to get it up. Somehow he was going to get it back to Las Vegas. He had to make up for the terrible thing he had done at Indian Springs. If he had to die to atone, then he would die.

“My life for you,” he whispered in the darkness, and began to climb the stairs again.

Wild Child is being chased by Infinites, but the X-men intercept them and take them down.  Unable to communicate with them to let them know what happened to Sabretooth, Wild Child actually licks Rogue on the face so she can absorb some of his memories.  Gross. They head toward the plant in an effort to destroy it and possibly also save Sabretooth.
However it doesn’t look like they’ll be too successful when Holocaust seemingly beats him to death.

As they sneak into the plant, we get to see just how advanced Morph’s powers are.  He turns himself in a great white whale, a giant octopus, and a brick wall among other things.  He also makes jokes the entire time, usually to the chagrin of his teammates.  Sunfire burns things a lot and talks about getting revenge for the people slaughtered in Japan.  Rogue makes a good leader for the team, even if she can’t stop Blink from teleporting off ahead once she sees the state that Sabretooth is in.

Back in Westchester, Magneto and Bishop are talking when Nanny suddenly turns into a giant metal egg, enclosing baby Charles inside it.  It means that Apocalypse has arrived.

Blink squares off against Holocaust, and while he doesn’t take her seriously at all, she actually holds her own quite well against him.  He’s near impossible to kill, but she makes a valiant attempt.  Morph shows up to aid her, but surprise, it’s actually Rogue having absorbed Morph’s powers in order to get close to Holocaust and do him some damage.  It’s through this that we find that Rogue is just as capable of making bad jokes as he is.  Holocaust still knocks her cold though and only Morph changing into young Charles is enough to awake her and make her get back up.

In New York, Apocalypse shows a captured Magneto this footage of Rogue to aid in his torture of him.  Magneto tells him that he and his X-men will never give up as long as they are alive.

Apparently Apocalypse’s followers aren’t so brave, as Holocaust prepares to teleport away when Rogue gets the upper hand against him in the fight.  He tries to take her with him but she is pulled back at the last minute, to find both an alive Sabretooth and Iceman standing there.  An angry Rogue declares that the age of Apocalypse is over.

Obviously, my choice to speed things up by finishing out these series a little faster means we’re missing some details.  I’m pretty sure we’ll see Magneto get captured in another issue.  But I don’t know that it really matters, as we all know pretty much where this is headed at this point.

Morph seems to be Lobdell’s only chance at releasing some humor in these otherwise very dark comics.  I don’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have a silly character to let that out on.  Besides that it’s really great to see Rogue in this strong leadership role.  I know she’s since led a few teams for the X-men and it’s a role she definitely deserves.  For two issues that are basically two halves of one fight, this is a pretty strong story, and a great lead in to X-men Omega, though it’s going to take us a while until we get there.

The actual “story” of this issue is only three pages long.  One of the Madri sneaks into Apocalypse’s lair to find out if he is considered chosen or forgotten.  The rest of the issue is devoted to character profiles told from Apocalypse’s perspective.  While you might think these would provide some new information about this world’s back story we haven’t seen, in fact it just sums up what we’ve already seen so far in the previous issues.  And yet this was priced at $2.50 when the normal issues were $1.95.

Suffice to say I’m not going to bother recapping the profiles.  What may be slightly surprising is that “chosen” does not equal “fighting for Apocalypse.”  He chooses who he truly thinks is the fittest to survive rather than who agrees with him.  That is pretty consistent for his character.

Chosen: Magneto and Rogue, Cyclops, Sinister, Storm, Quicksilver, Four Horsemen, Weapon X and Jean Grey, Colossus, Angel, Sabretooth and Wildchild, Bishop, Madri*

Forgotten: X-man, Havok, Northstar and Aurora, Beast, X-calibre, Human High Council, Gambit and the X-ternals, Charles Xavier

* The Madri are chosen but then quickly switched to forgotten on the last page when Apocalypse kills the idiot for snooping.  Really I don’t know what else he expected.

Obviously this issue is not much more than an art gallery, though nearly all the art is stuff we’ve seen previously.  It’s a cash grab, nothing more.  I was one of the suckers who fell for it back in the day, probably hoping to get more details like some of the previous guidebooks I had purchased had contained, but instead was left with nothing but a recap of stuff I already knew.  It’s the risk you often take as a comic book fan.

In an effort to speed things along, the remaining reviews will contain both issue #s 3 & 4 at the same time.  I imagine that means they’ll be a little longer, but it also means I’ll be done with this project before the end of the year.  That part makes me happy at least.

Chapter 64

The dying man opened the Permacover notebook, uncapped his pen, paused a moment, and then began to write.

I’ve talked about at length about how much I feel sorry for Harold. Not that I exactly sympathize or even excuse a fraction of the things he does, but I get why he does them. Growing up teased and bullied does give someone a certain mindset. If you’re lucky, you find an escape. For me and like Harold here, it was always reading and writing. During the worst years of my bullying was when I first discovered fanfiction and online communities, and it was about the same time I started taking my writing seriously. It wasn’t much, but it’s what I had.

You have to wonder what would have happened to Harold had the superflu not happened, if he did go on to college and probably had found something away from Ogunquit and his family and people who didn’t know him. If it he hadn’t been so nihilistic by the time he came to Boulder, or even started to get to know other people than Nadine and actually give people a chance.

“He needs me,” [Nadine] said, “and I need him. You were never in it, Harold. And if we’d gone on together, I might have…might have let you do something to me. That one small thing. And that would have destroyed everything. I couldn’t take the smallest chance that might happen after all the sacrifice and blood and nastiness. We sold our souls together, Harold, but there’s enough of me left to want full value for mine.”

It’s so much worse reading this for Harold because he only now realizes that he could have changed everything. I know how hard it is to take people seriously, especially if all you’ve ever been treated as is nothing but a joke. So this is what I have to say about Harold: whatever waits for him, I hope that he is forgiven in the larger sense, and that he’s allowed to be happy.

He pulled the trigger.

Harold jumped.

Chapter 65

You know, it’s interesting that I’m picking up on so many more parallels and foreshadowing bits (and my headcanon expanding exponentially) on this reread. Maybe it’s because The Stand used to be my “Read it at least once every year” book and I haven’t given it a proper reading since 2004/2005. Or maybe it’s because the four years of better reading comprehension and analysis are finally paying off. (Huzzah for four years of college and my English lit degree. See, an arts degree does pay off!) Because only now is it that I’m picking up on all the parallels between Flagg and Mother Abagail.

(I swear, that earlier mention of “Richard Freemantle” as one of Flagg’s aliases has to be deliberate. It has to be. I really ought to email King a fan letter begging to know if I’m on the right track here because if it’s just a placeholder name, my little English major heart will break.)

How had the girl been able to escape him? He had been taken utterly by surprise…He had known about her knife, that had been child’s play, but not about that sudden leap at the window-wall. And the coldblooded way she had taken her own life, without a moment’s hesitation…

His thoughts chased each other like weasels in the dark.

Well, Flagg, as we’ve established: DAYNA JURGENS IS MORE AWESOME THAN YOU. And also, is that a hint of hubris I see? Getting a bit too proud? Is that a parallel I spy?

Because Flagg’s getting tired of trying to figure out what’s going on in Boulder without being able to see everything that’s been going on, and his plans keep blowing up. Oh sure, we can pin the Judge’s messy death on Bobby Terry messing it up (out of fear or just dumb luck or something else, we can discuss later), and Dayna was probably just a fluke. But even though Flagg knows that Mother Abagail’s dead, he’s not so sure if she hadn’t woken up from her coma…just like he knows that there’s another spy, he just doesn’t know who it is.

Meanwhile, Nadine’s having her own doubts on whether or not she ought to be going to Flagg. After all, Harold was supposed to die instantly, not break his leg and then trying to take a shot at Nadine before she runs away. But at this point, where exactly is Nadine supposed to turn to? She can’t exactly go back to Boulder (no way is she going back to Boulder); she could just wander the desert until she finally collapses from exhaustion/heatstroke/dehydration…but then Flagg could just find her in time before she dies.

Or in this case, she finds him.

“You said, ‘As promised.’ Who promised me to you? Why me? And what do I call you? I don’t even know that. I’ve known about you for most of my life, and I don’t know what to call you.”

“Nadine,” he said, “I have forgotten. Come on.”

(Okay, HEADCANON TIME: Nadine’s the Jesus-in-the-desert figure in everything. She’s the one being pitted by God and Satan, going back and forth on whether or not she’s going to succumb to temptation. Think about it—biological family dead (although my brain wants her to be an actual changeling), adoptive family also dead but never really grew to love her, always feeling out of place and never allowing herself to be loved until she gets to this point of despair where she gives into Flagg. Nadine is the pivotal character in this whole grand scheme.)

May I give massive points to King for really bringing across how revolting and disgustingly creepy it is to be around Flagg, especially when he wants to be ‘intimate’? God. It’s a really good writer who can make me squirm as I’m reading this, and it’s really not in a good way as he describes everything on Nadine’s end. Just…augh.

And it didn’t matter. She was pregnant. If she was also catatonic, what did that matter? She was the perfect incubator. She would breed his son, bear him, and then she could die with her purpose served. After all, it was what she was there for.

Chapter 66

It must really suck to be in Lloyd’s position. Not that he was any better off in jail (depending on what your definition of better off is), but being the second-in-command must really suck. Especially when your boss can shapeshift at will and take off whenever he damn well pleases, and is Lloyd going to say boo to that? No, he’s not because he knows what Flagg can do, and Lloyd’s not going to piss off Flagg. And it’s probably not fun when everything is going to shit around you and you can’t exactly call up your boss and explain to him that “No, seriously, we’re screwed.”

First, there’s a fire at Indian Springs, killing two pilots, and said fire is set by Trash. Not because of Trash’s usual pyromaniac tendencies, but because someone said something that triggered him. And even though the majority of the Vegas population doesn’t like Trash, they know that there’s nothing they can do about him—he’s just this creep who somehow got into Flagg’s good graces.

Lloyd said hesitantly, “ Maybe someone stole those fuses out of the back of his sand-crawler while he was taking a leak or something.”

Carl said patiently: “That’s not how it happened. Someone hurt his feelings while he was showing off his toys and he tried to burn us all up. He damn near succeeded. Something’s got to be done, Lloyd.”

Also, being in the second-in-command position, Lloyd just knows exactly how pissed off Flagg is at the moment. Especially since there’s a third spy running around and no one in Vegas knows who it is. Well, no one in Flagg’s circle knows who it is.

“Okay.” Then, in a rush: “If it’s important, you tell him I’m the one told you. Julie Lawry.”

You can’t tell me that there’s some higher power at work here when the best lead to finding Tom Cullen is Julie Lawry. Yeah, she could potentially screw everything up, but there’s a really good reason why she’s not well-liked by the people in Vegas that she’s met so far.

“Which all proves what?” Lloyd asked when she finished. He had been a little intrigued with the word “spy” but since then had lapsed into a semidaze of boredom.

See? Of course, Julie’s going to be more focused on her getting screwed over by two guys (and not in the way she wanted) and getting revenge on them instead of focusing on the point of the matter. Okay, yeah, she gives Lloyd a name to go on, but he’s not taking her seriously, not when he’s got a firebug probably that seriously needs taken care of.

And thanks to Lloyd’s preoccupation, Tom Cullen is ready to make the journey back to Boulder to hopefully give them some information. Note that Flagg is also conveniently preoccupied with getting Nadine “prepared” (*shudder*) to barely take notice that someone’s leaving his boundaries.

There’s a grand plan here, all right. It’s just not Flagg’s.

Nate is being pulled in two different directions – Forge wants him to show restraint with his powers and learn how to handle a situation without them, while Essex pushes him further than he’s ready to go. In typical form, Nate is far more attracted to Essex’s way of thinking.

Essex also leads the group to one of Apocalypse’s factories where they discover that Beast is gathering human remains to harvest the materials to help build alpha level mutants. Seeing the carnage, Nate flips out and goes on the attack when they were just supposed to be doing a reconnaissance mission. He manages to make it out of there alive, but not without one of the Madri escaping to go let Apocalypse know about this alpha level telepath. Forge is not happy.

Brute confronts Essex and tells him that he recognizes him, and I don’t know why they’re beating around the bush on this as if we don’t know who the guy with a diamond on his forehead named Essex is. Mr. Sinister is set to attack Brute when Forge comes in and tells him he doesn’t want him as part of their party anymore. Nate meanwhile has grabbed Siryn Sonique and is bringing her via psi-link to Westchester where he saw Magneto last issue. It’s actually baby Charles that discovers their presence, and while Magneto tries to ask who’s there, Sonique breaks the psi-link and sends them back.

And it’s just in time, because Domino and her fellow rogues have arrived to attack the whole group.

I find myself completely uninterested in what is happening here. Clearly Sinister created Nate as an attempt to overthrow Apocalypse, and he’s going to find out that Nate just isn’t that easy to control. On top of the obvious plotting there’s some really weak dialogue and I can’t really enjoy myself at all.

Illyana Rasputin and another young mutant named Ace are hiding in the depths of the Seattle power core they are forced to work in as slaves.  They must remain quiet to make sure that the Sugar Man, the evil mutant that runs the place, doesn’t find them.  He passes them by, and they remain safe for now.

Outside, two humans are leaving their jobs where they torture and kill other humans for Apocalypse.  They catch a ride home, not realizing that Skin and Chamber are in control of the cab.  Chamber blasts them so the two of them can steal their uniforms.

On the other side of the compound, Colossus and Katya are sneaking in the back way to try to rescue Illyana.  They are temporarily delayed by a mutant they refer to as an undercloak, but the two of them kill him easily.

Meanwhile, Husk is pretending to be a human servant for the Sugar Man.  He quickly figures out she’s a spy, partially by using some gas that makes her cough a lot, but mostly just because she’s the worst undercover agent that ever existed.  He does not shoot her in the way that is shown on the cover of the book at all.  Instead he threatens her but decides he wants to take a drink from the bottle that was hanging around her neck.  Unfortunately for him, the contents of the bottle are actually Vincente in liquid form, who tears him apart from the inside.  Once dispatched the two of them join together to take on Sugar Man’s appearance so they can get inside.  They meet up with Chamber and Skin not long after.

The issue ends pretty abruptly, assuring us that this was the “upbeat, positive chapter” and from what I remember, this is about as cheery as this series gets.  The fact that there’s no M and no Jubilee in this version of the young mutant series really makes this version uninteresting, and the dour tone doesn’t help much.  Sugar Man is a thoroughly uninteresting villain, in that his mutant power seems to be that he’s a (literal) giant sleazeball, and he is killed so quickly that you can’t really care.  I think this is definitely my least favorite series of the Age of Apocalypse.

Book Three

This is it. We’re getting into the final showdown of good vs. evil in the brave new post-apocalyptic world. I have to bring up one of my favorite bits from Good Omens, where Aziraphale talks about the nature of the apocalypse and revelation—basically, well, if this was all so cut-and-dried, why does there need to be a war of good vs. evil in the first place? There’s no guarantee that the good guys will win, right? This is Stephen King, after all. Sometimes, the bad guys do win. (Although he tends to keep that regulated to his shorter works, not the doorstoppers. But still.)

So, the epitaphs: King opens up Part 3 with slightly more obvious song quotations than the previous opener, notably the opening verses of both Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” The Guthrie one’s more interesting to me, because that song isn’t really about this utopian view of America where everyone’s welcome and free and happy. (The last verse talks about bank repossession and private property. WOO SOCIALISM.) But I like that it opens up this section, given one of the conversations in the first handful of chapters. And on the other end, we have “Stand By Me” (which very obviously has become associated with another one of King’s works), which I think works more thematically for all of the character development that we’ve gotten for the bulk of the book. I think that it says something about all of these characters, most of whom never knew each other existed and that they found one another. I like stories about characters who are lost and find a community in strange circumstances—this is one of the reasons why Lost is one of my favorite shows—and I think using the song “Stand By Me” really illustrates that sense.

(The third quote is one by Carley Yates that we’ve seen earlier in the book. “Hey, Trash, what did old lady Semple say when you torched her pension check?” ~FORESHADOWING~ )

Chapter 61

In the last section of the book, we didn’t get much insight to the Las Vegas situation, aside from the chapter introducing Trash. Harold and Nadine notwithstanding, of course—we haven’t had a good look at Flagg’s entire operation at the heart of it all. So, I like that Part Three opens with Flagg’s sentries on the lookout for the Judge. First, it gives us a much better idea of how Flagg operates on his followers. Not like Lloyd or Trash where he does show some respect for them (although I would say that it’s not very much), but the vast majority of his followers who’ve come over for whatever reasons.

Our focus characters here are Bobby Terry and Dave Roberts, two guys just working for Flagg and bored out of their minds. And here’s something I really love—in the last section, I mentioned that there’s very little acknowledgement that there’s supernatural forces at work in this book, particularly within the Boulder community. With the Las Vegas folk, well…

Dave had pointed out that Flagg might be anywhere. He was a great traveler, and stories had already spring up about the way he could suddenly appear in a small, out-of-the-way burg where there were only a dozen people repairing power lines or collecting weapons from some army depot. He materialized, like a ghost. Only this was a grinning black ghost in dusty boots with rundown heels.

Brr.

Both Dave and Bobby think that the stories told about Flagg are complete bullshit—that Flagg encourages them to increase fear. Although Bobby’s not quite too sure, but he’s ready to dismiss the stories as crap…just not deep down. (I could sit and here and talk about other historical dictators that have done the same thing, but let’s be honest—here’s the stick, the horse is kinda dead.)

Anyway.

As Flagg has predicted, the Judge comes by in his Jeep. NO JUDGE, TURN BACK! Lucky for him, Bobby Terry wasn’t paying attention, so the Judge is able to get ahead for the time being. When we last saw the Judge leaving Boulder back in Chapter 55 (wow, that feels like a long time ago), there was this underlying sense of excitement even though the Judge and the reader by extension knows that his adventure wasn’t going to end well. But damned if the Judge wasn’t going to make the most of it. (It’s kinda like the end of Return of the King where Bilbo says he’s going to go on one last journey to the Grey Havens.

GODDAMNIT KING, NOW YOU’VE GOTTEN ME DOING THE LOTR COMPARISONS.)

But the Judge does know that his journey to the West isn’t going to be as magical or breathtaking or even a tenth of his previous journey to Boulder. And I like that we see how hard it is for him, getting around the clogged roads and slowly making his way to Vegas.

And during one of the stops for the night, we get this fantastically creepy encounter with a crow,

Like the raven that had flown in to roost on the bust of Pallas. When will I find out the things they need to know, back in the Free Zone that seems so far away? Nevermore. Will I get any idea what chinks there might be in the dark man’s armor? Nevermore.

Will I get back safe?

Nevermore.

(I would like to point out that corvids are awesome birds—seriously, go look up how smart crows and ravens are. And I get that they’re great for atmosphere and creepiness, but I do think the intelligence level is severely downplayed. Also, crows are responsible for my favorite lolcat gif ever. So there’s that.)

We catch back with Dave and Bobby, on their way to catch the Judge. Flagg has made it very clear that while the order is to kill the Judge, it’s to be gutshots only—no headkills. The body needs to be identifiable when they ship it back to Boulder. As I said before, JUDGE RUN FOR IT! GO BACK!

[The Judge] glanced up toward the passenger window of the Willys and saw Bobby Terry leaning out, holding .45 in both hands. Rain was dripping off the barrel. His face, dead pale, was still frozen in that maniacal funhouse grin.

This ends as well as you’d think it would. Bobby gets off a good shot to the Judge’s stomach, knocking him and probably killing him, although it’ll take awhile for him to bleed out. The Judge, bless him, goes for his gun and starts shooting back—he’s going to take the bastards down with him. And then Bobby gets off a lucky shot. Through the Judge’s eye.

Mm. You guys remember what happened in Chapter 48? The crucifixion scene? Yeah. That was bad enough.

A new sound in the rainy afternoon.

A strange clocking sound, like rundown bootheels hammering swiftly along the secondary road macadam.

And Bobby Terry finds out that those stories about Flagg weren’t exactly bullshit after all.

Chapter 62

At the end of the last four chapters, I proclaimed that this section of the book is EVERYTHING IS DEATH (again) AND EVERYTHING STILL HURTS. The Judge? Dead. Dayna Jurgens? Ohgod.

Dayna at least made it to Vegas with little problems and has been sleeping with Lloyd. DAYNA ILU. Keep being awesome for however many pages you have left. She’s heard about what happened to the Judge, but is keeping quiet about her own involvement within Boulder. (Although considering her own opinion of what she actually thinks of Flagg, uh, Dayna, you may want to pay attention to the stories they tell about him.) And what she has been picking up about Vegas isn’t the best of news. Because not only are they getting jet programs up and running again, but they’re got Trash working on the weapons. And Trash is pretty much a kid in a candy store.

“He sniffs it out, sweetbuns. It isn’t really so strange. Most of western Nevada and eastern California was owned by the good old U.S.A. It’s where they tested their toys, all the way up to A-bombs. He’ll be dragging on those back someday.”

[Lloyd] laughed. Dayna felt cold, terribly cold.

When she’s not sleeping her way for information, Dayna’s made at least one friend over in Vegas, a girl named Jenny. I like that this at shows not everyone in Vegas are all horrible awful people who want to see die, just somebody who ended up there.

(YOU KNOW WHAT, ALTERNATE TIMELINE. Dayna stabs Lloyd in the gut and makes a run for it. She grabs Jenny and drags her to Boulder, somehow avoiding Flagg the entire time. I don’t know, we’ve already had one deus ex machina, maybe she’ll just slip his eye. And then Dayna and Jenny have a torrid love affair as they live out the rest of their lives in Boulder, or even a small house outside of it, in the countryside. I NEED THIS, BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT’S COMING.)

Dayna’s working on the streetlamps one day when she happens to glance down at some of the people milling about the street. And one of them just looks familiar…

That face, looking up at her.

That wide, smiling, wondering face.

Dear sweet Jesus in heaven, is that Tom Cullen?

…

I really don’t want to get to the next part. I really don’t. I men, there’s one bright spot, and I have to give the Free Zone Committee for at least sending the woman with titanium balls. But…alternate timeline? Please? THIS IS GOING TO BE NICK ANDROS ALL OVER AGAIN, I KNOW IT.

…damnit.

“Wake up! Wake up! Goddamnit, wake up you bitch!” …

Lloyd was there, looking down at her with cold anger. Whitney Horgan. Ken DeMott. Ace High. Jenny. Only Jenny’s open face was also blank and cold.

Jenny no please Dayna likes you come to Boulder they’ll have cookies.

“You in a little hot water, Lloyd? Sleeping with Mata Hari?” She grinned at him with tears of pain standing in her eyes.

Just stab them all, Dayna. You took out the band of rapists. You can do this, you’re awesome.

Well, she goes with them. And may I give Dayna Jurgens my highest of praise, because she calls every single member of the posse out for being weak little lapdogs to some guy with a God complex who wants to stir up shit. (Again, knowing that Dayna doesn’t know the full extent of what Flagg can do, I’m not holding it against her.) God, yes. She sees right through Flagg’s psychology. Bless you, Dayna. Bless.

‘My name is Dayna Roberta Jurgens, and I am afraid, but I have been afraid before. All he can take from me is what I would have to give up someday anyhow– my life. I will not let him break me down. I will not let him make me less than I am, if I can possibly help it. I want to die well…and I am going to have what I want.’

God, the whole scene between Flagg and Dayna is so well-done and tense. I love that Dayna reminds herself constantly who Flagg is and if she can, what she’s here to do. And Flagg still rattles her. Tries to make her comfortable. He’s friendly. If you’ve ever read The Dead Zone, I consider the villain of that book, Greg Stillson, to be one of the scariest in King’s works. Not because he has infinite cosmic powers (itty bitty living space), or that he’s openly psychotic (and he is), but because he’s friendly. Stillson knows how people expect him to act. That’s one of the things that really scares me about people in general—the ones who know exactly what they’re doing. (I’m reading Under the Dome right now, too, and I’m putting this up as a kind of contrast—Jim Rennie, the villain of that book, doesn’t really scare me as much because he’s a little too cartoonish. I know there’s more people like Rennie than there those like Stillson—thank God—but just the way Rennie’s portrayed is a little too “I get it, you don’t look ultra-conservatives.”

Point I’m making is that friendly charismatic villains > infinitely scarier than just power-hungry ones.)

Dayna figures him out. She knows that she’s going to die, but not before calling him out on being helpless and bullying a bunch of people into doing his dirty work. She knows exactly what Flagg wants. And even though he cheats her one potential moment of awesome by stabbing Flagg (blast the infinite cosmic powers!), Dayna goes out fighting.

(I’m just letting that picture speak entirely for itself. And it says “FUCK YEAH, DAYNA JURGENS.”)

“Take the whole thing out to the east of town and douse it in gasoline and burn it. Do you hear me? Burn it! You burn the fucking thing!”

Dayna Jurgens, we salute you.

Chapter 63

Reasons why I do dread the end of this book: Dinny McCarthy. You know how Joe is the pet kid of Boulder, except he’s horribly broken? Okay, Dinny is the slightly more adjusted version of Joe in Vegas. And knowing what I know happens, oh god why. Why do you do this Stephen King. He’s six. Dinny’s not even one of those horrible kids who burn ants with a magnifying glass. Augh.

(Seriously, just the number of kids who die in this book, not even those from the plague, I just…I have a thing about kids dying horribly. Not even my kids if I had any, but…I tend to get into “Punch in the face mode” when I hear about kids getting senselessly killed.)

Dinny is comfortably passed around the women of Vegas, each of them being his ‘mom’ for the week. And as I said, he’s happy! He’s well-adjusted! He’s living with a woman named Angie for this week and playing and oh god I know what’s coming.

(New alternate timeline: Jenny wises up, grabs Angie and Dinny and the three of them hoof it to Boulder, where Jenny apologizes for what happened to Dayna. I NEED THIS CLOSURE.)

Angie said, “I think Dinny loves Lloyd Henreid and Tom Cullenmore than anyone else in town. Tom Cullen is simple, but—“ She looked at the girl and broke off. She was watching Tom, her eyes narrowed and thoughtful.

“Did he come in with another man?” she asked.

The copy I’m reading is 1439 pages. (Well, to be fair, I’ve been switching between my proper hardcover and the slightly-more manageable mass market paperback, because lugging around the former is a bitch.) 688 pages ago, we had the meeting of Tom Cullen and Nick Andros. And there was someone else, wasn’t there. It’s a long book. There’s a lot of characters to keep track of.

“Julie? Are you all right?”

Julie Lawry didn’t answer. She stared after Tom Cullen. In a little while, she began to smile.

Rogue, Sunfire, Morph, Sabretooth (with Wild Child over his shoulder), and Blink are all in Chicago trying to save the humans there from being killed by Holocaust’s impending attack. The humans are panicked and fleeing, and things are made worse when suddenly Sunfire loses control and starts flaming out in front of them all. Rogue is forced to absorb his powers to calm him down, and in doing so she views his memories of a time when Apocalypse killed his friends and family while Nemesis held him back. Nemesis being Holocaust’s former identity. This is all presented in a very heartfelt and dramatic way that is very touching. Also, seeing how scarred and damaged Shiro seems to be by his powers is also quite shocking and adds to the tragedy.

Meanwhile, Blink and Sabretooth are off alone and discussing their own plan. In order to give everyone the best chance, Victor wants Blink to send him directly to where Holocaust is now so he can take him on and slow him down. He fully accepts that it is a suicide mission. Blink initially balks at this, unable to see her mentor go. This moment is very sweet and touching, and it’s a sharp contrast to the psychopathic killer we’re used to seeing in the main timeline. They were clearly trying to suggest that in different times Victor could be very similar to Wolverine, though I have to admit it’s a little hard to believe that this guy is one and the same. Still, it’s a well executed moment. Rogue tries to stop their plan but Blink temporarily subdues her and sends Victor off.

He and Wild Child are transported to Indianapolis, directly in front of Holocaust. Holocaust plays the role of a bond villain expertly by revealing to Victor where his Infinite processing plant is – i.e. the place where they create the soldiers who serve Apocalypse – because he’s confident that Sabretooth will be dead soon anyway. However what he didn’t realize is that Wild Child is not quite as wild as his name suggests, and Victor sends him off hurriedly to spread that bit of news. Why Holocaust doesn’t run after him but instead sticks around to fight Sabretooth, we’ll never know. Regardless the two of them duke it out, and reveal that it was Magneto who put Holocaust into his current state as revenge for killing the Scarlett Witch. Sabretooth tries to rip the head off his containment unit, but apparently that doesn’t work very well to hurt him and instead he ends up beaten on the ground unconscious while Holocaust moves on to Chicago.

Back in New York, Bishop asks why Magneto isn’t out there with his followers. He holds the baby Charles in his arms and explains to Bishop that if he must destroy this world as Bishop suggests, than he should be allowed this night to say goodbye to his son. Not far away, Apocalypse has located Magneto’s current location and proudly announces that he is coming for him himself.

Say what you will about Scott Lobdell as a writer these days, but there were definitely times in the 90s where he really was fantastic at character moments, and this is one of them. Rogue and Shiro, Victor and Blink, and Magneto and Bishop all have really strong moments together here, and credit must also be given to Joe Maduriera’s art as well for helping to convey that emotion. All around just a good, solid issue, and while some of the other series in this event seem to be specializing in weirdness, Astonishing seems to be holding on to what the X-men are all about, regardless of the reality they are in.

I came late into comic books. Most of what I knew about comic book characters came from watching the movies and reading a lot of Wikipedia articles on the subject. I started reading manga when I was a senior in high school, but aside from the odd glance at work, I never really sat down and read a lot of Western comics until the last year. I wouldn’t go and say that I’m a comics geek (the majority of my comics shelf is largely Neil Gaiman) but I do have titles that I like and enjoy.

Recently, I’ve picked up more graphic novel adaptations. I’m not a person who sits here and rages about how “books should never be adapted into a visual medium! It never replaces what I’ve pictured mentally!” (Unless they really cock it up—then my rage is mighty.) There are actually some really cool adaptations floating around, and with the right artist and script, there’s been at least one or two series I’ve rebought purely for the “Pictures are PRETTY!”

(Tangenting again, but same goes for movies. I actually don’t like exact adaptations, and I will give a movie a free pass if it works better. Going off Stephen King, tell me if there is one person who does not hear Morgan Freeman when they read “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” You can’t unhear it, can you?)

The first I had heard of Marvel’s adaptation of The Stand was going into work one day and browsing our meager comics section. We had gotten in a copy of the first volume, Captain Trips and I flipped through it, mostly to see how it looked and where volume 1 ended. And I thought that it was okay. I really wasn’t going to jump into it, and it was more out of curiosity than being a Stephen King fan. This was in 2009, a few months after the first hardcover had been released. When I went for my comics run this last month, I noticed that the last issue of the whole adaptation had been released. And as I was looking for something to do for an intermission, I thought, “Oh, why not.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the comic adaptation (or never knew about it), it was adapted by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and drawn and colored by Mike Perkins and Laura Martin respectively. (And honestly, if you’re more familiar with any of their work, please tell me. I can name most of the big comics names, but there’s a lot I tend to go “Who?” at.) I picked up the first two volumes: Captain Trips, which roughly covers the first half of book 1 (Campion’s break from the Project Blue facility to the introduction of Randall Flagg and the death of General Starkey); and American Nightmares, which ends the first third of the book (Stu meeting up with Harold and Frannie).

I actually like a lot of the artwork in both volumes. The characters are more or less how I pictured them. I absolutely love the little Easter eggs Mike Perkins throws in—a lot of very ominous scenes are punctuated with the image of a crow observing the action, which I think helps introduce the more supernatural element early on.

The other good thing is that you do go through a lot of the story very quickly. As I mentioned, the first two volumes cover the first third of the book itself. What also helps is that Aguirre-Sacasa does move around some chapters. One of the best examples is Chapter Five of Captain Trips, where the introduction of Randall Flagg is mashed together with the growing panic of fear and panic. (Chapters 22 and 26 respectively in the book proper.) One of the good things I’ve liked about visual mediums, especially for something like The Stand is that there’s no need for a lot of expository description; it’s presented to you right there in the few seconds you can look at an establishing shot. The only thing that I didn’t like is that Aguirre-Sacasa does lift a lot of the narration—not that he didn’t write his own script, but that I felt that the narration felt too repetitive. There’s just some times that I didn’t need to read the details, and just see what’s happening on the page. It’s more apparent in Captain Trips, as it’s not as prevalent in American Nightmares.

Would I recommend this to a Stephen King fan? Well, it depends. I’m probably not going to pick up the other volumes (Goodreads lists 6 volumes thus far; as I mentioned, the last issue came out sometime last month), because while I do like the adaptation, it’s nothing something I feel like I must absolutely own. I thought the art-style was good, but nothing truly spectacular. (And oh God, some of the close-ups were worse than the illustrations in my copy. I mean, there’s only the one that really wigs me out, but man. Mike Perkins goes out of his way for the disgusting factor. ) I will say it’s worth checking out if you already haven’t and if you are a big fan of The Stand, it might really interest you. It’s really on a case-by-case basis. I’m not too wild on it, but I didn’t think it was bad.

Continuing from last issue (and if you don’t remember, I don’t blame you, because I barely did either) Destiny made physical contact with Switchback and saw all of Avalon in flames.  Meanwhile, Nightcrawler is suffocating along with the other refugees within a submarine whose systems are quickly failing.  They are forced to rise above the surface so they can breathe.

Once there, they run into what I assume is a pirate ship whose captain is Callisto, better known as the leader of the Morlocks in the main reality.  She offers the humans and mutants refuge aboard her ship.

Damask, Dead Man Wade, and Moonstar are following them, going by Apocalypse’s orders to trail Nightcrawler to find the route to Avalon.  Apocalypse contacts Damask and orders a change of plan on a whim – he’s going to send her reinforcements so they can go ahead and destroy Avalon now.  It certainly suggests that Destiny’s vision is correct.  But the best part of this scene is how gleefully evil these bad guys are.  Moonstar keeps going to Dead Man Wade with a razor in order to watch his healing factor at work.  Damask gets sick of her foolishness and kills her.  You might think DMW would be relieved, but he’s actually quite sad that he can no longer “play” with Moonstar.

Callisto loads the refugees on to her ship, taking all their valuables first “as a cover” for being a salvage ship in case they are boarded.  Really, that should have been the first clue, but these people are so desperate they followed the orders without question, and no big surprise, Callisto actually just send them all to drown.  Nightcrawler, who had been hanging out on the top of the submarine just not paying attention to any of this, figures it out when its convenient to the plot and then gets pissed.  He slaughters most of Callisto’s crew and is about to duel with her when Mystique drops out of a helicopter and orders Callisto to leave her son alone.

I don’t think it’s any big shocker that the Deadpool moment is the best part of the whole issue.  The problem with the rest of the issue is that Nightcrawler is just as guilty for killing those people as Callisto is.  They suggest he needed time to recover from the near suffocation in the submarine, but if all the humans who were going through the same situation had enough time to recover to walk from one ship to the other and give up all their valuables, he really should have known what was going on.  Also, while we get plenty of corpses lying around with dead eyes, all the killing in this issue happens off camera.  That may be a censorship issue though, so I’ll try not to judge it too harshly.

Chapter 57

I mentioned last week that up until a few chapters ago, there really hadn’t been any experience of the supernatural or the fantastic by Our Heroes (excluding the prophetic dreams), and then we had the hypnotism scene with Tom. I do like that Mother Abagail hasn’t displayed any sort of powers (yet) or anything that overtly influences people to come over to side of the good guys. In fact, if you leave out a few scenes, just leaving the prophetic dreams, this could have been told just as well being about a group of ordinary people going up against the Antichrist, who not only has magic but access to technology.

But, as it’s been mentioned throughout the book, there are larger Powers at Be at work here, and Our Heroes aren’t the ones to notice things right away. They need a gentle nudging.

Larry started to ask how Leo and Dick had gotten on that subject, and then didn’t. The answer, of course, was that they hadn’t. Dick wouldn’t talk to a small boy about something so personal as making a baby. Leo had just…had just known.

Unlike the Tom scene, I think this is slightly creepy in that Leo isn’t nudged into going into these trances. (Actually, part of me thinks that the Higher Power needed to go in and move the plot along; considering what’s going to happen. By Higher Power, I mean Stephen King.*) It’s kinda…off, when he’s starts yelling about Frannie and how she and Larry both know the same things. And also, I think unfortunately Leo is the only who grasps what’s happening with Nadine when he does go into these trances and he does want to save her from Flagg. Except that Flagg’s hold on Nadine is so strong at this point, that even a higher-plane Leo can’t do anything.

Anyway. Going off Leo’s tip, Larry goes to see Frannie and the two of them start comparing notes about Harold’s behavior of late. Frannie relates her entire history with Harold, ending with her discovery of the chocolate thumbprint in her notebook.

“…Harold reads your diary and not only gets an earful but an idea. Hell, he might have even been jealous that you thought of it first. Didn’t all the best writers keep journals?”

“Are you saying Harold’s got a diary?”

I will give Larry and Frannie points for thinking of the variations of Harold having a diary: that it could be nothing; it could be like Frannie’s; it could be in code. (Oh, coded diaries, that could be really interesting.) The two agree to go to Harold’s house the next day and do some more investigating.

The other big development that after a few weeks of tinkering around, the Power Committee finally figured out how to get the generators working! They nearly blow up half of North Boulder, but hey! Progress! Electricity!

Onto the Adventures of Inspector Underwood and Frannie. The two of them break into Harold’s house, hoping that he would figure that the broken window is the result of some kids. So, they start in the basement and carefully make their way upstairs.

“Building walke-talkies instead of mousetraps,” Fran said.

She nodded, but there was still something about those bits of wire that bothered her.

OH FRANNIE. Maybe the Invisible Hand could push you to a clearer conclusion about those as well.

Larry and Fran uncover Harold’s journal and start leafing through it. It’s not in code at least, but it’s mentioned that Harold’s writing style is so cramped and small it’ll take days to read through everything. (As someone with pretty bad chicken scratch—my boss can attest to this—I sympathize. I’ve had days flipping through my notebooks, thinking “What the hell did I write?”) But it may just be easier for them to take a look at the sections Harold so carefully boxed off.

The first sentence in Harold’s ledger: My great pleasure in this delightful post-Apocalypse summer will be to kill Mr. Stuart Dog-Cock Redman; and just maybe I will kill her too.

Because things are ramping up this part of the book, while most writers would have ended the chapter there (and let’s be honest, that is a great “OH FUCK” line that makes you want to know what’s to happen next), we’ve still got more of the chapter.

Nadine heads to Ralph and Nick’s house to drop off groceries. And by drop off groceries, I mean she sets them up the bomb. She hides the bomb in a the living room closet, all the time confused about whether or not she should really do this.

And as she’s leaving,

The dark man entered her, and he was cold.

Auuuugh.

This whole passage is creepy and wrong and just so well-done. There’s a fine line to walk with omnipotent Big Bads (or even Big Goods) in that if the villains/good guys know EVERYTHING the other side is doing, then how is everything going to play out? Granted, Flagg’s warning is more to tell Nadine to get out of Boulder with Harold before Stu and the others come around, but still. And again, the whole description of Nadine being violated by Flagg—even psychically—is disturbing.

“DO WELL NADINE,” the voice boomed. “DO WELL, MY FANCY, MY DEAR ONE.”

*Again, I haven’t read Dark Tower, but I know what happens in the last three books and that he shows up and yeah, that’s one of the big reasons why I haven’t read that series. But that’s not for here.

Chapter 58

Back with Our Heroes, Fran and Larry are sitting around while Stu reads through Harold’s journal, trying to piece some clues. Luckily, Leo is outside breaking the tension with his guitar and some bluegrass/folk/Top 40:

…”I remember that one. It was big just before the flu. He must have picked up the single downtown.”

“I can’t remember,” Larry said. “Pop music came and went so fast.”

(Is it bad of me that all I can think of for this scene is Charlie from Lost? Oh, Charlie, you were the best. I miss that show, I need to do a personal rewatch of it. /rambling.)

Stu finishes reading the journal and comes to the conclusion that even though Harold and Nadine are planning something, there’s really nothing that they can do until Harold actually does something that warrants suspicion. In the meantime, Stu’s going to keep an eye on the two to hopefully prevent anything from happening. Which would be great, except that Harold and Nadine have already hightailed it out of Boulder. The next night is also the most recent meeting of the Ad Hoc committee. Stu figures that they’ll be able to discuss the recent progress with the power plant and the other various committees.

This is probably one of the best sequences in the whole book. One of the big complaints I have with a lot of books that I read is that barely anyone does a good set-up anymore. Probably because most of the books that I read are first-person limited POV, but you can still have good set-up in those; it’s not something that should be limited to third omniscient. (But then again, I’ve read the latter with poor set-up, so…yeah.) When I first read this book, I remember being nervous for the characters: Harold and Nadine are overlooking Boulder, ready to see Ralph Bretner’s house go up in flames and while Larry, Stu and Fran have some idea that Harold’s planned something, they don’t know how far in advance he’s done it. And Frannie knows that something’s wrong and that they need to get out of the house, but she doesn’t know what it is actually. What could save Our Heroes from being blown to hell?

How about a literal deus ex machina?

“She’s come back!” Dick had to bellow to make himself heard over the cycles. “Oh, she’s in terrible shape! We need a doctor…Christ, we need a miracle!”

Nearly everyone runs out the door to find out what’s going on with Mother Abagail. Everyone except Nick.

He couldn’t talk, but suddenly he knew. He knew. It came from nowhere, from everywhere.

NICK NOOOO DON’T DO IT. UGH. EVERY TIME.

Speaking firmly but not loudly into the walkie-talkiie, he said: “This is Harold Emery Lauder speaking. I do this of my own free will.”

You know when there’s a really good book or movie or show and you love it, and you experience it a hundred different times, that even though you know all the lines and what’s going to happen, you still want things to turn out differently? But they never do. I’ve read The Stand at least a good four or five times, and just this sequence. Augh. It’s so good and so well-done and I don’t want it to turn out that way. I want everyone to get out, to make it to the final showdown, and yet…

EVERYTHING IS DEATH AND IT HURTS.

Chapter 59

Birds. She could hear birds.

She puzzled over it in the red darkness for a long time, and suddenly she remembered the explosion.

Nick didn’t make it out alive. Nor did Sue Stern, which makes me feel more the worse for Dayna (and now I need happyfic about those two, it’s the only way I can console myself.) Neither did Chad Norris, who was giving a report on the Burial Committee. (I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY, HAROLD. One of the few people who tried being nice to you AND THIS IS WHAT YOU DID.) Four of the other people who came in to tell everyone of Mother Abagail’s return also died in the blast. And as Stu points out, if Mother Abagail hadn’t shown up when she did…well…

…”She died, didn’t she? In the night. She came back to die.”

“She’s not dead yet. She ought to be, and George Richardson says she’ll have to go soon, but she’s not dead yet…And I’m afraid. She saved our lives by coming back, but I’m afraid of her, and I’m afraid of why she came back.”

The entire town of Boulder knows that they have to face certain truths about their existence, and Harold’s bomb is the wake-up call they needed. (I actually just reread On Writing; there’s a lengthy section on this part of The Stand and the whole point of blowing up half the characters.) The only thing that anyone really can do at this point is gather everyone together and hold another meeting.

The majority of Boulder’s population (aka People We Don’t Care About, because they’re not the Heroes) are understandably pissed and ready for a knee-jerk reaction. Including a lynch mob for Harold and Nadine.

“…We’re…we’re supposed to be the good guys here. I guess we know where the bad guys are. And being the good guys means we have to be civilized about this.”

After an update from George Richardson on the physical state of Mother Abagail, Glen takes the floor to discuss the mammoth in the room: Randall Flagg. Presenting what evidence they have, Glen makes the point that everyone in Boulder had some inkling that Flagg was Out There in the West, and was calling to them just as Mother Abagail had. (Random tidbit, but I just noticed that one of Flagg’s aliases they collected was a Richard Freemantle. I have no idea if that intentional or not, but it’s something to think on.) The collective whole of Boulder takes the opportunity to calm down and talk things out; they’re not going to come to a conclusive decision, but all that pent-up anger and rage gets out.

Two nights after the power comes on for good, Glen shows up at Stu’s house with some better but still not good news.

“Dead?”

“God help me, I almost wish she were. She’s awake. She wants us.”

Mother Abagail gathers the remaining members of the Ad Hoc committee to dispense what she’s discovered in the desert.

“…I don’t know if it’s God’s will for you to defeat him. I don’t know if it’s God’s will for you to ever see Boulder again. Those things are not for me to see. But he is in Las Vegas, and you must go there, and it is there that you will make your stand.”

Glen, Larry, Ralph and Stu are to go to Las Vegas, as soon as possible. (With Kojak.) Frannie makes Stu swear on Nick’s blood that he will come back to her. But because that’s not even possible to know, he swears he’ll do his best.

Chapter 60

They went on, leaving Boulder behind them…

None of them slept well that first night. Already they felt far from home, and under the shadow of death.

In comparison to the first part, Book 2 is…well, let’s be honest. It’s a slow burn. There’s a lot of set-up and deliberating, and there are points were the plot dragged on about politics. But it’s still interesting, and those last few chapters…at least you know that the plot’s not stalling anymore.

When we last left our heroes, they were hitching a ride through space thanks to Lila Cheney’s teleportation powers.  They end up in the Shi’ar galaxy, staring down the Imperial Guard.  Their leader Gladiator tells them to surrender, but Gambit chooses to run.  The Guard pursue them, but after a brief scuffle that involves Gladiator hitting Strong Guy with a huge boulder and Strong Guy responding by punching him out of the atmosphere, they manage to escape.

They don’t make it far into the forest though until they are taken prisoner by the plants.  That’s right, on this planet the plants are sentient.  I was kind of hoping this might be the planet that the Dark Phoenix destroyed in the main timeline, but apparently not.  A half shi’ar alien who was been exiled on the planet finds the heroes and explains to them what is going on.  In this reality, D’Ken came to power, overthrowing Deathbird and killing Lilandra, therefore leaving him free to abuse the M’Kraan crystal’s powers as he chose since Lilandra couldn’t call upon the Professor for help.  As such the crystal is going haywire and occasionally blinking planets out of existence, and the one they are currently on is next.

This bout of exposition is interrupted by the Imperial Guard, who have been led here by Rictor, who hitched a ride with the X-ternals.  But they don’t truly have time to fight before the world starts turning to crystal.  Lila can’t tap into her power again, so it would seem like things are hopeless.  But fortunately the Starjammers save them in the nick of time, and in this reality they are led by Deathbird.  She tells them that the crystal is much more than they ever imagined, and it wants their help to fix what’s going wrong.

Then Gambit rips some wires out of a console on the ship for no good reason.  I have no idea.

I enjoyed the change of scenery after so much apocalyptic bleak landscapes I’ve been subjected to in the other series, but this issue did have its problems.  Jubilee’s sarcasm is cranked up to 11, to the point where even I can’t enjoy it anymore.  Lila starts the first half of the issue naked, then magically gets a costume that couldn’t have possibly been given to her by the alien, so was it and its bulky belt and headband hiding in Gambit’s purse?  And then there’s that last bit of Gambit seemingly trashing a ship he just got rescued by.  It’s there mostly so he can raise the wires charged with kinetic energy over his head while he proudly proclaims that he’s going to save the universe.  You want to draw something cool, I get it, but it should really make sense in some way.  If I was Deathbird I’d drop him off in the vacuum of space for doing that.

Chapter 54

As boring and tedious as they are, I do actually really like the meeting minutes of the Boulder Free Zone committee. In a lot of post-apocalyptic media that I’ve been exposed to, once the characters get to whatever safe haven was their intended destination, it’s normally after the climax and we don’t really get to see how they’re adjusting to fitting into a new society or how they’ll create a new society. I mentioned last week that since this is an American community, the Boulder Committee already has some semblance of how to model a government. (Having Glen Bateman around helps, too.)

The big talk of the Committee meeting is how to handle the Dark Man and more worryingly, the fact that people from Boulder have left, presumably to go to Vegas. We don’t know for sure that say, Charlie Impening left to go join Flagg’s side, but since that’s the only conceivable reason to leave; yeah, let’s just say Charlie was seduced by the dark side.

(I have points while I’m reading when I sit in think, “How would I fair in Boulder if I were living in this universe?” I consider myself a friendly person, but most of the time my outward appearance involves me hunched over a book or a notebook with my headphones blasting, emitting signals of “Leave me alone.” I wouldn’t be surprised if I caught Stu Redman ‘checking in’ on my house because I don’t really socialize.)

Anyway, with people coming and going, Glen proposes that they start up a Census committee, not only to keep an eye on who’s leaving, but to also adjust the amount of people who’ll probably be living in Boulder by the end of the year. Nick also proposes that they start up law enforcement, with Marshal Stu Redman heading it up. Frannie throws a fit over this, not because “Nick, why would you just spring this on Stu without asking first?” but because

“’Your man is down in the county courthouse with a bullet hole in his head and I guess we made a mistake?’ Jesus Mary and Joseph, I’m going to have a baby and you people want him to be Pat Garrett!”

Dear Frannie: Yes, we know you’re having a baby. The hormones aren’t a excuse any more. Grow up and deal with it.

The action switches over to Harold as he continues his work on the Burial Committee. There’s a nice little parallel going on here with Harold and Trashcan, and how both of them are accepted on to the various jobs committees and work. Trashcan, as we’ve noted, is just so ecstatic that people are treating him like a person, like he has worth (and my heart continuously breaking during all of those scenes). Harold, on the other hand,

The committee would be just fine… as long as they had good old Harold Lauder to make sure their shoelaces were tied, of course. Good old Harold’s good enough for that, but not quite good enough to serve on their fucking Permanent Committee. Heavens, no.

And the worst part here is that the guys Harold’s working with want to be friendly with him. There’s only one person in all of Boulder who knows about Harold’s past life as the pariah of Ogunquit, and even with Frannie’s place on the permanent committee, I don’t know if Chad Norris and Weizak would care if Frannie told them “Harold’s a weird nerd and possibly evil.” They’re at least making an effort.

But despite not wanting to go out and rustle up some booze after work, Harold comes home to find company.

“Well,” he said. “What can I do for you this afternoon, Miss Cross?”

“You could call me Nadine, for a start. And you invite me to stay for supper. That would get us a little further.”

Oh, no.

Nadine fixes Harold dinner, and once he’s finished, she takes him out into the living room and…well…explains her terms. In a matter of speaking.

“We can do things. Things you’ve never even…no, I take that back. Maybe you have dreamed of them, but you never dreamed you do them…We can do anything—everything—but that one little thing. And that one thing really isn’t so important, is it?”

Images whirled giddily in his mind. Silk scarves… boots…leather… rubber. Oh Jesus.

I wrote a book review recently that talked about fat-shaming and how fat people aren’t allowed to be sexual, and if they are, the automatic assumption is that they’re into the really kinky sex. And the same thing goes for really nerdy and unpopular characters as well- they’re so socially awkward that they must like the really weird hentai porn. (Which, as we all learned this past summer, is really more for rich abusive young billionaires.) And most of the time, the audience is supposed to be disgusted or laughing at “Look at the fat kid whacking off to rubber suits.” And I hate that this has all we’ve gotten for Harold, is “Oh yes, he’s tragic and bitter and nihilistic, but you know, he has fantasies about harem girls, so it’s okay if he goes to the bad guys!” It’s like icing on top of the cake. I’m not saying that Harold’s fantasies are healthy, but there are reasons why they’re called fantasies. (And honestly, I think Harold’s fantasies are about as extreme as E.L. James’s. )

(For the record, my mom—who I do note for getting me into Stephen King in the first place—reads this. HI MOM!)

Chapter 55

Judge Farris, you’ve really only popped up once or twice in the whole book, but I like you. Don’t listen to Larry; stay in Boulder and argue with Glen Bateman over philosophy and ethics. I’d like that.

“Sending me west,” the Judge said quietly. “To spy out the land. Isn’t that about it?”

“That’s exactly it.”

The Judge is awesome. He knows exactly what the Committee’s plans are (without even having heard a rumor) and knows what’s to be expected of him. And he accepts it, and also gives Larry a nice talking to about Nadine. I don’t think the Judge nor Larry understand the full extent of what happened to Nadine, but I like that the Judge is able to go “You fucked up, son.” (Not in that “Oh, Larry, how could you not choose Nadine?” but “You know, you should have asked what the hell is going on and tried to help.”)

And then there’s this passage:

[The Judge] had told Larry he was too old for adventure, and God save him, but that had been a lie. His heart hadn’t beat with this quick rhythm for twenty years, the air had not tasted this sweet, colors had not seemed this bright. He would follow I-25 to Cheyenne and then move west toward whatever waited for him beyond the mountains.

This says a lot more to me about the chance of going on an adventure, that while the outcome might not be a good one, the joy and feeling and excitement are all there. The Judge knows that, Randall Flagg or not, he probably won’t make it back to Boulder, but damned if he isn’t going to enjoy this one last chance.

It was one of the finest days of his life.

Meanwhile, Nick, Stu and Ralph are going off to see Tom Cullen to convince him to undertake his own spy mission. I do love the idea of Tom’s house—this gloriously kitschy collection of knick-knacks and souvenirs and models. It fits his character so well, and I love that he puts time and thought into putting everything together. It unnerves Nick and Stu, but I like it.

It was mentioned during the first Ad Hoc meeting about putting Tom under hypnosis to give him directions as what he’s to do in Vegas. It is kind of an eerie scene, with Tom talking about Mother Abagail and Flagg and what their roles are. It’s one of the few times that anything overtly supernatural appears for Our Heroes—up until this point, it’s only been dreams directing them to Boulder or warning them of Flagg. I accept the idea that the hypnosis is used as a gateway, but there are much larger forces at work here,

“Are the same Tom that Nick met in Oklahoma? Are you the same Tom we know when you’re awake?”

“I am God’s Tom.”

There’s a lot I can say here about this scene being problematic, but it’s still really effective. I’m not happy with how Tom is portrayed throughout most of the book, but King does do it well at times, and those scenes are really effective.

Stu goes home goes to Frannie, where they have an argument over whether or not it’s right for them to send Tom out to face Flagg. Only now Stu’s conflicted about doing it, with Frannie sitting there going “Okay, Stu” and not fighting him. *headdesk* (Also, in the Pot-Meets-Kettle category, Frannie tells Stu about Nadine moving in with Harold. Stu’s response? “She must be twice his age.”)

There’s another perspective switch to Harold and Nadine at the end here. I won’t go into too much detail, as there’s a lot of navel-gazing on both parts. Nadine wonders if following Flagg’s orders and letting Harold abuse her sexually was the right thing; Harold continues his nihilistic downwards spiral. In the end, the last two passages do have a big purpose: shit is about to get even more real.

Chapter 56

Good news, everyone! There’s a group of people coming in from Tennessee and they have a proper medical doctor with them! Huzzah! Now they don’t have to worry too much over accidents the impending baby boom that Frannie’s already started. This group even had a pregnant woman with them! We’re all saved!

Stu grabbed [Ralph] “They died? The babies died? That what you’re trying to tell me? That they died?”

Doctor Richardson isn’t sure if Captain Trips is still hanging around and that’s what killed the kids or if there were other determining factors. However, there’s a good chance that if two immune people got together, then their babies might be immune! Which still isn’t good for Frannie. (GENETICS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.) Stu doesn’t want Frannie to find out right away, but when he gets home, he discovers that Sue Stern already beat him to it. (And given how fast the news about Mother Abagail spread around, did you really think that no one was going to tell Frannie about “Hey, we’re getting a doctor!”)

Meanwhile, Nadine goes back to her place to pack up the last of her things when SURPRISE! Leo is there, having slipped back into his catatonic state when Nadine first found him.

“You have Larry and Lucy. You want them, and they want you. Well, Larry wants you, and that’s all that matters…Things are different for me now, Joe, and that’s not my fault. That’s not my fault at all. So you can just stop trying to guilt-trip me.”

Honestly, as I’m reading this scene, it really comes across that Nadine’s hallucinating Leo/Joe, given her mental state and wanting to have something to hold onto. It’s like the last gasp of her conscious to stop her from going over to Flagg and give in completely, that she may still have something here.

If she wanted to keep her sanity, she must soon be away.

The second general meeting of the Boulder Free Zone is less eventful than the first. General elective periods are set, and Stu is elected as the Marshal. But you can’t have a Marshal without a good law committee, so that agenda is brought up.

Heads craned expectantly as people waited for the Judge to stand up and accept the responsibility in his usual rococo style..Stu’s eyes met Glen’s with mutual chagrin; someone on the committee should have foreseen this.

Hindsight’s a bitch, ain’t it?

Well, in case the Judge does come back, the people of Boulder are ready to welcome him onto the Law Committee; in the meantime, at least one lawyer was spared by Captain Trips, and he’ll sit on the committee for now.

The next day, Sue Stern and Dayna Jurgens head out to go ‘camping.’ Again, may I point out, I LOVE YOU DAYNA. After Sue approached her about spying for the Boulder Free Zone, Dayna equips herself with a spring-loaded switchblade. (There was a comment a few weeks ago about how Dayna would have been a Slayer. Yes. This. A thousand times.) Dayna makes her goodbyes to Stu, and they head off.
Nearly a week later, the male committee members are hanging around Tom Cullen’s place. Since it is the full moon, it means that Tom has to go and pack up for Vegas. (I’m surprised no one else in Boulder has noted that three major members of the community have left town within a few weeks of each other, especially Tom’s leaving.)

When they left, Nick was still standing on the side lawn of Tom Cullen’s house, his hands in his pockets, his head down.

Fran finally meets up with George Richardson, who just so happened to specialize in OB/GYN in his old practice. As far as we now, her baby’s fine, and it should be a clean birth.

As most of this chapters have been in this section, there are a lot of things happening, but there’s a lot of mundane details that do help with character development and the general shape of the plot. There’s interesting stuff here, but I can see the plot getting boring quickly. For example, who really wants to see Harold playing around with electronics?

The door closed, and the thing that Harold had made sat in the open shoebox in the gloom. There was a battery-powered Realistic walkie-talke handset from Radio Shack…Wired to it were eight sticks of dynamite.

Synopsis

Tenchi is out picking a field of carrots, and chasing Ryo-Ohki out of the basket before she can eat them all. Ryo-Ohki suddenly shrieks and runs, which Tenchi writes off as her reaction to the season’s first snowfall.

In an alien manufactured hot spring (!?) on the Masaki property, Ayeka enters to find Ryoko already there. The princess turns to leave, but the pirate talks her into joining her for a drink. As they throw back sake, Ryoko reminisces on her time imprisoned in the shrine, where, in spirit form, she watched Tenchi grows up as he kept finding himself drawn to the spot. All she ever wanted to do was play with him, but now he avoids her like she’s a monster. Which leads Ayeka, who’s quite drunk by this point, to tease her about being an old monster. Mihoshi joins them and throws back a few, and Ryoko and Ayeka roll their eyes as Mihoshi goes on about how she must be destined to be with Tenchi because he rescued her.

Sasami barges in, badgering them for bathing so long and getting wasted. Ryo-Ohki also pounces at Ryoko, trying to give her a warning just as a sphere appears, within which is Kagato. Ryoko tries to slip away, but he causes electricity to rip across her body, wracking her with pain, before he teleports himself and Ryoko away. Tenchi arrives as Mihoshi uses her sensors to confirm Kagato’s identity.

Mihoshi arms herself (and dresses) and uses her computer to lead the others to the Jurai tree at the heart of the Masaki shrine. Kagato is there, with Ryoko, and he invites the Jurai royal family to join them on his ship. Mihoshi tries fighting him off, then Tenchi breaks out the sword, but both are ineffective. Ryoko tries to rescue Tenchi, but Kagato uses her power bead to take control of her mind, causing her to restrain the young hero. Kagato wants the sword, which is a key to great power, but knows it can only be released in the hands of a suitable owner, and he wants to know if Tenchi is such. When Ryo-Ohki causes a distraction, Tenchi breaks free and dives in to attack Kagato, slicing open the sorcerer’s cheek.

Kagato creates his own blade, and batters Tenchi down. Just before Kagato can retrieve the royal sword hilt, it springs across the pond and into the hand of Tenchi’s grandfather, who’s finally revealed to be the aged Yosho. Both Kagato and Ryoko attack, their bolts and energy blades all deflected by Yosho’s impressive skills and mastery of the Jurai sword’s abilities. He eventually frees Ryoko by severing her hand and releasing her power bead, but when Kagato realizes he’s outmatched, he takes Ryoko and retreats to his ship, telling the others he’ll be ready and waiting for them.

Ayeka confronts Yosho, and he reveals he didn’t know she was so deeply attached to him. He never intended to return to Jurai because his half-Earthling status would have created dissension among the populace over those willing to accept him on the throne. So he stayed on Earth and fell in love, fully accepting that his lack of exposure to the Tree of Life of Jurai would cause him to age and one day die. But now there’s Tenchi, who he tries to nudge Ayeka towards as a potential suitor.

Tenchi vows to rescue Ryoko, and when he retrieves the royal sword hilt, it flares, declare him its new master. Mihoshi and Sasami pledge to go with him. Ayeka is reluctant because of her wealth of baggage with the space pirate, but eventually relents. When they question how they’ll get there, Ryo-Okhi flares into her ship form, even absorbing the central dome of Ayeka’s sunken ship.

Ryoko comes to, encased in an hour glass cell of some sort in the main chamber of Kagato’s ship. He sees the heroes approaching and laughs, dismissing Ryoko’s claims of humanity and independence by threatening to turn her into a stone. After all, he’s the one who created her and Ryo-Ohki in the first place. She rages at him.

Kagato fires a volley of shots at Ryo-Ohki, and everyone tries their hardest to evade, but none of them have a clue how to operate the ship. Ayeka barks a bunch of orders that all prove ineffective. Mihoshi tries in vain to interpret the controls. She then just resorts to getting herself and the ship drunk, causing the craft to waver around and impressively manage to miss most hits.

Tenchi decides to go down and interface with the portion from Ayeka’s ship, and she guides him into releasing the Light-Hawk wings, an energy shield that deflects the blows and also has an offensive function, but one that leaves the ship vulnerable. The two ships unleash their big blast, and Kagato’s proves triumphant as it rips through the defenses and destroys the spire of Ryo-Ohki containing Ayeka’s ship.

Everyone but the laughing Kagato is stunned. Ayeka sinks into desperation as she frantically scans the wreckage for some sign of Tenchi. Ryoko flies into a rage, breaking free from Kagato’s ship and teleporting throughout the debris field. She searches and searches…

But all she finds is Tenchi’s blood-stained headband.

After shedding her tears, she turns to Kagato’s ship and vows to make him pay.

Review

As I said in the last piece, I’d only seen this episode once before, a little over a decade back when Pioneer first released the OVA collection on dvd (the DVD set I still own and am currently watching, but which includes only the first 13 episode as the final stretch of 14-20 hadn’t yet been made). Watching this episode again was a lot like seeing it for the first time, except for one bit that rang so many bells in my memory as I suddenly recalled how long the moment had stuck with me way back then. It’s when Ayeka is looking out at the blasted wreckage of Ryo-Ohki, and she just starts saying Tenchi’s name over and over again, slowly evolving from muted shock to shrieking horror before she flat out screams. And then we cut to Ryoko, also screaming as the sudden flood of emotion allows her to break free, and all she can do is teleport around the wreckage, searching in vain for her friend, an only finds a bloodied headband. It’s a damn powerful moment and really cements just how much the seemingly meaningless hero has come to mean to both women, and I credit the maturity of occasional moments like this for giving weight to the character relationships which separate it from the lighter, jokier air of harems to follow.

We’ve already seen the bond develop between Ayeka and Tenchi during the great episode where they took shelter from the rain. Here, she finally finds the long-lost brother she’s spent the majority of her life saving herself for, only to find out the feeling wasn’t exactly mutual and that he’d moved on, forcing her to now have to do the same. And Tenchi is the only one around who has a sliver of the same bond she found with Yosho, making him an easy and comfortable rebound to slip into. But not just a rebound, as it’s playing off the bond we’ve already seen the two start to forge. As for Ryoko, we finally get a lovely explanation of her attachment to Tenchi through the montage of watching him grow up. Her having a fully aware spirit form while trapped in the shrine is maybe a bit much, but it’s wonderfully executed, as this boy becomes one of the few familiar faces she’s experienced in her 700 years of imprisonment, and I love that he’s fully able to see her as a child, but as he grows, the perception becomes more of a feeling, which explains why he kept finding himself drawn to explore the cave back in Episode 1. It’s a perfect retroactive motivation for him… but it doesn’t explain why Ryoko didn’t know who he was in Episode 1 and chased him around the school with the intent to kill him. The creators are doing their best, but I do still suspect they were making this show up, at least in part, as they went along.

It’s agonizing, but I’m also impressed at how dark they go with Ryoko here. I think it robs her character a bit to suggest much of the bad stuff she did in the past was as a result of Kagato’s control instead of her rebellious personality, but it’s still well executed as we see her completely robbed of her will and hover slack-limbed like a marionette as Kagato turns her on her friends, then seals her away again in his ship. Kagato himself is otherwise a pretty meh presence as a villain. He’s not bad, and I like how his light coloring and bookishly handsome appearance with the beady little reading glasses is a bit of a different look for a baddie, but he’s your typical “I’m bad because I’m bad and so I do bad things to you” space warlock who doesn’t have much personality beyond his badness and is merely an obstacle for our heroes to overcome.

To swing back to Yosho, while I wish we’d gotten a little more of him in earlier episodes to build the twist of his reveal off of, I like that he doesn’t go through a complete personality change. He’s still the wise old coot with a playful, easy-going sense of humor, who can totally kick some ass when he needs to. When he gets his hands on the royal sword and takes on Kagato and Ryoko, we not only see the fabled hero of lore, expertly slicing and shielding himself, but a glimpse of the warrior Tenchi will one day have the potential to be. Shame his voice acting is a bit weak. It’s awkward and a little too high pitched given his long and trim design.

The entire episode is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I mostly like it, but there’s aspects that I like the idea of more than I do the execution. I like how Ryo-Ohki rips into her spaceship form, and that she’s so young that she needs to merge with the remains of Ayeka’s spaceship, but I wish they’d done more to make the design a fusion of the two instead of just having the full-size Ryo-Ohki we’ve already seen who just so happens to have the dome of the other ship embedded in one of her crystal spires. And she’s suddenly even bigger than her earlier form, because that dome was far larger in relation to Ryo-Ohki in Episode 2 than it is here. I like that we finally get an explanation as to what the hell it was we saw when Mihoshi arrived on Earth, that it was a black hole that temporarily opened up, but I still don’t know the reason for it. Was it a way for her craft to stop itself before hitting the atmosphere? Was it a self-destruct to prevent it from crashing into the planet? I absolutely love that we get to see Mihoshi drop the ditziness for a few seconds and go dead serious when she finds herself face-to-face with Kagato, but when she’s trying to figure out the controls to operate Ryo-Ohki, why the hell does she suddenly get herself and the ship drunk, and where did she get the booze?

But the likes absolutely out-weight the dislikes, as I love moments like Ayeka refusing to help save Ryoko, then being instantly torn on her choice. Or the design of the Light-Hawk wings that Tenchi uses to shield the ship. Or how Mihoshi believes Tenchi is her destined love until she’s so deeply moved by seeing him and Ayeka together. It’s a solid episode, and a nice setup for the big (initial) finale.

Additional thoughts:

• Love the idea that the family has changed all of their farmlands (they have farmlands, too!?) to nothing but carrots so as to keep Ryo-Ohki fed.
• So wait, the dome where everyone’s bathing in the opening… where did that come from? It’s not a part of Ryo-Okhi. It’s not the central dome of Ayeka’s ship, which is still sunk in the lake when Ryo-Ohki retrieves it. What is this thing and where did it come from?
• Ryoko grinning as she watches child Tenchi take a piss is both amusing and creepy.
• When Ayeka turns deep pink upon drinking, is that just a visual gimmick, or an actual ability of her race? Because it only happens when she’s pointing out the quality of her skin, and then we visibly watch her fade to her regular tone. Granted, the same thing happens to drunk Ryo-Ohki, so probably just a visual cue.
• I love Ryoko’s black and red jumpsuit.
• Tenchi is back in dependable, budding hero mode.

Dub Notes

Absolutely fantastic work on the dub for this one, with everyone fully owning their characters by this point. When we get to the climax, with both Ayeka and Ryoko freaking out over Tenchi’s apparent death, Darling and Burchard nail it. Haunting scene, regardless of the language it’s available in.

Among the rest of the cast, the Grandfather is a definite improvement over the Japanese version, having a little more weight and aged heroism to his voice, while still capturing the sudden swings into humor. And Michael Scott Ryan (credited as Weston Reese) not only laces his Kagato with a perfect level of malicious menace, but the similarity between his voice and Kiefer Sutherland’s is uncanny.

Logan finds Jean trying to help the humans who have ridden across the atlantic on sentinels into Europe.  Unfortunately, two of Apocalypse’s followers, Box and Copycat, have also snuck in among them and start shooting like crazy.  Logan takes them down, but Jean doesn’t want him to kill.  It seems the two of them are starting to grow apart.

Logan heads over to give the high council information, but he’s stopped by Mariko.  They hint at their past and briefly tease us by reminding us of their history in the main reality before she tells him she does not trust Brian Braddock.  They are interrupted by an explosion as yet another terrorist group is attacking, this time a group of altered humans who in the main reality make up the Reavers.  I have no idea where they got an airship from or why this is suddenly a steampunk world, but regardless Logan decides to jump into the flames and hope his healing factor will keep him alive long enough to take the Reavers down.

He manages to do just that, even with all the hair burned off his head (and isn’t it interesting that his pants don’t burn up like his shirt does?), but as he’s done he hears Jean telepathically telling him goodbye.  She’s making her way back to America to warn them about how the Human High Council plans to blow it all sky high.  He manages to catch up to her before she takes off, but she tells him he’ll have to kill her if he wants to stop her, and we all know he can’t do that.  Well, unless she’s the Phoenix in a movie we don’t want to talk about.

This is an extremely quick issue.  I guess because it’s primarily action and not much else.  The Mariko bit feels completely unnecessary, but otherwise its paced fairly well.  I like that it hints at a past between Logan and the Reavers without actually spelling it all out for us.  It just leaves you wondering and able to make up the reasons for yourself.  Beyond that there’s really not much to say because it’s over and done so quickly.