Agents of SHIELD S07E10 Review: Mommy Blues

Agents of SHIELD, Season 7, Episode 10: Stolen

Okay, after last episode's pretty fun but ultimately standalone time-loop episode, we sort of go back to the Inhumans-vs-Neo-Hydra storyline that was set up in episodes 7 and 8. And it's around this episode that I really did get a sense that the story is building up to something huge and not just either delaying or doing standalone episodes. And... and there's nothing essentially wrong with either of those, but for a season that's basically built up to be the grand finale or whatever, I've felt like a combination of the lukewarm Chronicrom threat and a lot of unanswered questions regarding the FitzSimmons or the Zephyr time-travel situation felt like they were just being dragged on and on for no real reason. 

And... well, Nathaniel Malick is apparently going around recruiting minions from time. It's cleverly all the seasons that don't quite get represented in season five's original finale, so we've got an evil (or, well, misguided) Inhuman in Kora and the extremely welcome and unexpected return of young John Garrett, played to the hilt as a SHIELD agent's equivalent of a frat-bro by Bill Paxton's son. Nathaniel Malick isn't like, bad or anything (especially compared to the Chromicoms), but he's kind of stilted and John Garrett hamming shit up is a very, very welcome addition to the ever-growing Clubhouse of Villains With No Supervillain Team Name. Malick seems to really like the word 'anarchy' but that doesn't quite fit as a supervillain team name either. 

It's a bit odd how Jiaying and Gordon seem so gung-ho with SHIELD basically disappearing and reappearing, but hey, they're here, and they are allies. Malick's group (I'm going to call them Neo-Hydra until we get a better name) has taken over Afterlife off-screen and is funneling Inhuman powers into Malick's goons. The show doesn't need to show off a huge scale war or anything, but this is one where I really wished they had shown more because from what we get, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that Afterlife had like, a population of maybe ten Inhumans tops. Also, RIP Li, whose powers are drained to fuel one of Malick's goons, Durant.

This also means that sending in actual Inhumans into Afterlife is dangerous because Malick will be hunting for them, so Jiaying and Daisy have to sit this mission out, while Gordon and Yo-Yo are only used sparingly. Of course, this ends up with Jiaying dropping the casual bombshell that Kora is her daughter, leading to Daisy having to confront May... and the clueless pre-trauma Jiaying about her stance on motherhood. All Jiaying can see from Daisy is that she's also a young girl that's hurting after some bad blood with her mother, and she doesn't quite realize just how much her own advice about 'trying to do the right things, but it comes out all wrong' ends up clicking with Daisy in a way. 

Speaking of emotional sequences with your own parent-that-is-much-younger, we get Deke talking to nana Simmons and we get a pretty interesting question from Deke, which seems to be the huge question that's bothering Simmmons. What if the time drive isn't actually communicating with Fitz? Simmons have been having faith more than anyone, but Daisy's description of Simmons' absolutely distraught reaction does raise some questions. What if Fitz was already dead, or incapacitated with some way? A very, very great scene. 

That whole emotional sequences with Daisy and Simmosn were great, but not so great is SHIELD's attempts to get into Afterlife. Apparently Sibyl and Malick have predicted it, and they quickly capture Gordon and funnel his powers into John Garrett. Who also gets to meet Coulson and ham shit up with "buddy!!!!" and being absolutely terrified of the potential of becoming an eyeless Inhuman like Gordon. 

Turns out that while Coulson, Mack and Yo-Yo were raiding Afterlife (and freeing like the six unnamed Inhuman extras), Malick takes teleporting Garrett and bamfs over to the Lighthouse. Everyone assumes that they are after Jiaying, which seems to be the case, but May is a bit overwhelmed by John Garrett's teleporting around, while Malick shows up and starts rambling, telling Jiaying that Daisy is her daughter from the future and the 'terrible mom' Daisy is talking about is actually her. The scene isn't completely unexpected, but there is a great twist of the knife when Malick brutally kills Jiaying in front of Daisy just to spite her. 

Also, turns out that Neo-Hydra's main plan wasn't even to get Jiaying, but rather Simmons. As Garret uses his powers to run circles around May and Sousa, he captures Simmons, evacs Malick from fighting a very angry Daisy, steals the Zephyr and buggers off. Speaking of something unexpected, in Afterlife Gordon gets killed (rather anticlimactically) while Kora seemingly surrenders and offers to help. I don't trust her at all, and the actress does play her as being pretty shady. We'll see. 

The episode ends with the revelation that Deke, who is obsessed with his walkman, not realizing that the Zephyr was raided and has taken off with him in it, while Malick reveals that the reason he captures SImmons is that he wants to find the location of Fitz from her brain, because according to the Timestream Fitz is the only factor that will cause him to fail in his ambiguous plan of world domination and timeline-shattering.  

Also, while Sousa does lampshade it a bit earlier when he tells Daisy to talk to Jiaying, the timeline's pretty much already fucked, huh? Some of the changes SHIELD has done might be handwaved with 'well, maybe the end result is the same if the specifics are different'. Like the death of Mack's parents, or the Lighthouse being active years before our SHIELD got to it, or Enoch being stuck in the history, or Wilfred Malick surviving a couple of extra years... but now actual characters who are involved in things we see have clearly befallen different fates. Jiaying and Gordon are dead, while John Garrett knows a whole lot of future knowledge and has superpowers now. 

Ultimately, more of a setup episode with a couple of huge twists near the end, but I've never actually held too much faith about this season being 'the untold adventures of SHIELD throughout history' or whatever. Which, admittedly, would be pretty cool if we had one where they influenced and 'righted' history in some way or other, but at the same time this storyline of them basically fighting an alternate timeline history or whatever is certainly a pretty neat one as well. I do know that I am far more invested with this eclectic group of villains in Malick, Garrett, Kora and immobile-Sibyl moreso than I ever did with the Chromicoms. We'll just see if the final couple of episodes will conclude the story well. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• John Garrett, of course, is the main villain in the first season of Agents of SHIELD, played by late actor Bill Paxton. His son James Paxton takes over the role as a younger John Garrett here. 
• Garrett brings up Coulson's first death at the hands of Loki in The Avengers movie, although he doesn't quite know Loki by name. 
• The Triskelion, most prominently featured in the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier, shows up here.
• We get another "discovery requires experimentation" line, a reference to Daniel Whitehall's catchphrase from the second season. 

Doom Patrol S01E13 Review: Man of Muscle Mystery

Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 13: Flex Patrol

Three episodes left to go, and I am actually kind of curious where to go from here. I guess with the big Cyborg moment in the previous episode, we're ready to go ahead with the Mr. Nobody themed finale of the season. The last episode wrapped up the Bureau of Normalcy storyline, too, and they serve as both a thematic and appropriate antagonist mainly for Larry and Victor. But while I'm going to assume that they got ripped apart by the butts that are loose, we do have a bit of a dangling plot thread to wrap up... namely, the Man of Muscle Mystery, Flex Mentallo. 

Honestly, I don't quite know enough of Flex Mentallo -- I don't think I reached the parts of him that were prominent in the batch of Doom Patrol comics I read -- to really care for him. Once this episode basically establishes him as an over-the-top, almost Tick-esque parody of superheroes more than anything, though, I'm all for it. Doom Patrol as a show never really took itself all that seriously, but Flex Mentallo has to take the cake. With the honest-to-goodness ridiculous ability of being able to alter reality by flexing different muscles, having a saccharine-sweet love interest and cat-rescuing modus operandi in his backstory, and being dressed like a pin-up model, seeing Flex Mentallo's backstory told to us from the very eye-rolling moment of his prime to how he was tortured, offered a glimpse of freedom when he retained his sanity and was willing to work together with Larry's Negative Spirit (except Larry was completely out of it and wallowing in depression and self-pity)... and now he's a broken, disheveled shell of what he used to be. 

It's interesting that this already character-heavy show would ask us to really be invested in Mr. Plot Device three episodes right as the season is about to end... but the fact that Flex Mentallo is honestly more of a caricature than a character works in the writers' favour, actually. And makes it easier for me to buy into his more... basic and less soul-searching story. 

I feel that this is more of a little stopgap to build up tension before the final two episodes of the season. Sure, the Flex Mentallo stuff is... interesting, giving us some measure of 'plot progression' as we go through the episode. But ultimately it's just kind of there, to get us used to Flex Mentallo and to have some Cliff/Jane bonding moment and a couple of laughs. A couple of laughs that turn into an 'aww, man' moment when you realize that Larry could've helped Flex and saved him a lifetime of grief so many years ago, and then it turns into 'awww, maaaaaaan' when they figure out that they need to bring Flex's wife Dolores (a.k.a. elbow cannon lady from two episodes ago) and then she disintegrates in Flex's arms due to some technology that the Bureau installed in her -- which somehow the Bureau has access to -- and it's all Uncle Ben/Wayne parents level of sadness... which then gets immediately whiplashed back to ridiculous hamminess because Flex Mentallo flexes his abs in anguish and rage to shatter windows. This is that kind of show. 

Cliff and Jane, as mentioned, are in a lot of a better place. Neither admit it, but seeing the two spend most of the scene together on a quest to bring Flex Mentallo back is pretty heartwarming, and their little journey-to-the-mind certainly ends up being better for them both. Larry, meanwhile, goes through a bit of an existential crisis, realizing that thanks to their brief separation with Bureau tech last episode, the Negative Spirit is no longer bound to him... but Larry owes his essential immortality to having the Negative Spirit inside of him, so that's going to raise a couple of fun new wrinkles, nevermind the fact that he might get another rush of guilt from the whole 'didn't free Flex when he had the chance' thing. 

Vic turns out to not have killed Silas, 'merely' hospitalizing and putting him in a coma. I guess the show's going to give him an episode to mope and process all of this. At least he doesn't kill Silas, but the fact that he screwed up, beat his father nearly to death and got played like a puppet on a string by Mr. Nobody and his vague reality warping powers of vague limitations is going to stay with him for a while. 

Rita Farr, on the other hand, is the star of the show. Rita is honestly easily my favourite character in the show, I have to say, and it's an interesting choice to basically keep her in the sidelines in major plotlines most of the times while also keeping her very prominent as a character as well. Rita's development is probably the most gradual and feels the most organic out of the group with only Larry really being the only one that gives Rita any sort of competition. I really love the middle parts of the season where Rita tries to be better, but it doesn't immediately cause her to expunge herself of her vanity and cattiness. While hanging around Cyborg in the hospital and trying her best to be supportive, it's interesting just how much her dynamic with Cyborg has developed, considering that the two of them have alternated between butting heads and being the token sane-person in any given scene. 

We also get the big revelation about the ominous baby crying and carriage, which simultaneously manages to be completely different than I thought it would be. I guess the easy (and eye-rollingly obvious) way would be to have Rita bear the guilt of having aborted or abandoned a child. And Doom Patrol certainly has gone for the obvious way -- like with Jane's pedophile dad -- but I'm glad they don't do it for this one. Which, while exactly the sort of thing comic books have tried and failed to tackle well, is also something that I wouldn't think fits Rita's story thematically. So as Rita ends up talking to a random old man that she helped out in the hospital, Rita confesses and pours out the story to her.

Turns out that Rita has been setting up promising young starlets into meetings with that asshole producer from her backstory, and that's the only way that an aging actress like her has always managed to keep her name in the industry. And through it all, Rita keeps convincing herself that it's a win-win, that she's not actually evil, and that's the only way to move forward in the industry. Until one of the young starlets, Marybeth, ended up pregnant from the producer and is implied to have taken her own life in the process. And Rita doesn't even know what happened to the baby... something that's simultaneously darker and less dark than what I expected it to be. Just like Larry in his 1950's encounter with Flex, Rita's crime is one of inaction. As she puts it, 'looking the other way should be so much harder than it actually is'. And as a character whose big character moments is to decide to give a shit about all the things going on around her, it's a great story. And one that wouldn't hit home so hard if April Bowlby hasn't been so god-damned fantastic in her role. 

And then, well, comes Mr. Nobody's big plan. He shows up, ominously declaring how his master plan of making a grand battle between good and evil and how the events of the past dozen episodes have been all building up so our protagonists become a superhero team. Which, okay, I totally kind of buy that, but at the same time... I dunno? Mr. Nobody's been kind of such a background character throughout this season. Sure, he's a presence, and being played by the very entertaining Alan Tudyk and his gimmick of breaking the fourth wall and prancing around with his tablet with his fanboy shirt and poster is interesting, but I kind of hope he's more of a character than a gimmick. 

With most of the Doom Patrol's main characters (other than Cyborg) having their personal storylines more or less resolved circa this episode, apparently what he wants them to do is for them to truly become a superhero team, a standard superhero team, to make for a clash between good and evil. Because Mr. Nobody is apparently sort of like a bizarre, meta-warping little genie that wants them to achieve their character developments... all the while sitting around in a weird white space, while decked out in Doom Patrol kitsch. Interesting, but so far... I honestly am not feeling Mr. Nobody at all. Sure, Alan Tudyk is a great actor. Sure, I'm confident enough in the writing team that they could definitely pull off a landing for the show. But the handling of Mr. Nobody as an antagonist still kind of feels like he's sort of under-utilized, like he really could've had a bigger presence in the show. Oh well. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Dolores is also Flex Mentallo's wife from the comics, and just like Dolores here, she doesn't really get a happy ending out of it, where she also met her end because her body was programmed to self-destruct upon meeting Flex.
• Doctor Saucer, name-dropped by Flex and Mentallo, is an enemy that Flex Mentallo fought once in the comics. He has a saucer for a head. 
• Cliff and Jane name-drop Wally Sage as an advertisement artist. In the comics, Wally Sage is a child with reality-warping powers that brought Flex Mentallo to life. 

Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #25 - Torment & Judgment

This is going to probably be the last one of these I do for a while, or at least in its current incarnation. Part of it is due to Blogger changing how inserting images work and making the creation of this page really difficult and long-winded for me, but part of it is due to a bit of a burnout in this era of Magic: The Gathering. I dunno, I've kind of been feeling it since around the time of the Urza blocks, but it really hit hard now that we're missing the Phyrexians and a proper long-running storyline. Looking up the next couple of blocks... let's just say that I probably won't be finding too much to talk about in the next couple of blocks either. So I'm taking some time off to just take a break and figure out if I'm just going to do 'highlights' of each block, or if I'm just going to abandon my attempt at reviewing every Magic expansion and just jump straight to the ones I do want to talk about like Kamigawa, Innistrad, Zendikar, Amonkhet and the rest. 

Can't even really get excited about the storyline in the Odyssey block either, it's pretty standalone and pretty standard stuff. Torment focuses on Chainer, a Cabal summoner, rising across the ranks of the Cabal while befriending the good guy main character Kamahl. Judgment concludes this story, with Kamahl making a promise to the dying Chainer, keeping the artifact known as the Mirari safe from others and from himself, and fights against the rest of the main characters. Kamahl himself slowly gets corrupted by the influence of the Mirari, and his sister Jeska tries to separate it from him. Ultimately a large proportion of the characters die at the end of the story, and the Mirari's powers are instead channeled into the land itself, allowing the fauna and flora to prosper. 

On to the cards!

• Click here for the previous part, Odyssey.
• Click here for the next part.
• Click here for the index.

________________________________________

TORMENT

Again, a lot of the White cards are just not interesting to me. Hypochondria is an amazing one, though, and it's a shame we don't get one of those kickass Magic one-liners. That lady hugging herself in panic while wearing a haphazard mask with a spiral face is ambiguous enough to be any kind of hysteria or anxiety, but it also kind of describes a hypochondriac -- someone who's so certain they have a serious illness -- pretty well. 

Major Teroh is the obligatory legendary card. He sure is a cool hawk-man person. He's probably heroic. I really don't have a whole ton to say here, really -- a lot of the legendary cards in the latest couple of sets just feel like they could've had the title of something generic like "Aven Commander" or "Aven Flagbearer" and it'd fit just fine. 


I'm still not a fan of "Nomad" being a creature type for some reason, but Possessed Nomad has one of the cooler card arts I've seen in a while. It's not a new concept, even within Magic, but the idea that this serenely meditating monk person has the reflection of a grinning, ragged demon? That's pretty cool, especially if that demonic reflection isn't just a metaphor but is real. This is Magic: The Gathering, where all sorts of weird horrors and illusions exist, so it might very well be literal. The gimmick here is pretty fun, with the 'Threshold' mechanic active, Possessed Nomad straight-up becomes a Black creature that destroys White creatures, fully becoming its demonic counterpart. 

Ambassador Laquatus is a Merfolk legendary person. He sure is a fish-person, and apparently he represents the... uh... the Cephalid empire? I guess the Cephalid empire has merfolk in their employ? The brief summaries I've read of the Odyssey block all portray him as a villain. I actually kind of was about to complain that the Cephalids miss out on having a legendary card, but if Laquatus is supposed to negotiate with the surface folk... of course they'd send the more humanoid-looking merfolk person. That actually makes sense. 

More Cephalids! These ones look a bit more colourful. I really love Cephalid Vandal just ripping up books for no reason. Nevermind the fact that those are apparently underwater books being read by octopus people. That Cephalid Vandal is sure going to rip those books up! Again, none of these cards have flavour text, so I'm not sure what's going on here. 

Llawan, Cephalid Empress is the queen of the octopus folk. I actually like her headrerss and ornamentation, and her cute little royal scepter. not a whole ton to really say here, though, she sure is a regal Cephalid.

Cephalid Illusionist looks like it's just such a dick. "Ha ha, look at Greg, swimming away from a mere illusion of a gulper eel, ha ha! Oh lord, look, he just voided his ink sac, what a coward!" Seriously, though, that poor Cephalid buddy in the background looks so terrified. 

Ghostly Wings gets to be here just because the art is so funny. "What would make a Portuguese Man o' War even more threatening?" "What?" "If we gave it ghostly angel wings and cause it to fly." Jellyfishes are murderous little bastards already, giving it wings would probably make them an apex predator. 

I was about to put one of the 'Hydromorph' cards here, but this guy is just so much cooler. Aquamoeba isn't even an elemental, just a 'beast', but it's just this monstrous being made entirely out of water, and I do love just how formless this is. There's like a head that sort of looks like a mole rat, some sort of tail and mismatched tendril-like horns, and judging by the tiny seagulls around it, this is a massive thing. Very cool.

Black gets a bunch of cards here that I feel are kind of notable. Boneshard Slasher is a horror, and, well, this is another set that doesn't have Phyrexians so the definition of Horror now expands a lot more beyond 'cyborg zombie monstrosity'. Granted, Boneshard Slasher here still looks kind of like an undead ghoul, but I really like the typical Ron Spencer grisliness that comes with so many little splinters and spikes covering thsi guy's wings and arms, the fact that he's got just one visible glowing eye, and his mouth is covered in like a cage of bone splinters. 

Chainer, Dementia Master, is our main character in this expansion. I'm sure I would like him better if I read his novel and knew all about the full-fledged character that he is in the novels, but I'd like him better if he's a full-fledged character and an interesting design. We're literally more than a couple thousand cards at this point; just some dude in fantasy garb and goggles doesn't do it anymore. 

Gloomdrifter, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of Chainer's bland design. Look at this classy ghoulish dude, floating around in a sky full of stars, with pants that look like pajamas and some burlap sack that's meant to represent a nightcap, just drifting around causing chaos with all these dudes. I dunno, I see the artworks of Chainer and Gloomdrifter and I am definitely far, far more inclined to believe that Gloomdrifter is the far bigger badass here. 

One of the themes in this expansion are the "Nightmare Horrors", which apparently are controlled by Chainer. I guess they are... creatures born out of nightmares? Or are they just horrors that can attack people only in their dreams? Whatever the case, they sure look nightmarish! Gravegouger has a particularly interesting design, with the lower body resembling some inky octopus, its upper body having a vaguely humanoid shape, its arms tapering off into a mass of ropy tendrils, and its head looking like the Xenomorph's face just melted at the end like play-doh on a hot day, terminating in more tentacles. And what are those bizarre rods made up of tendrils in the foreground? Are those the graves that the Gravegouger is gouging? Or are those something else?

The Faceless Butcher is one that's just straight-up 'cool', and it sure doesn't look like it has a face, or a head, having a traditional humanoid torso that just terminates suddenly where the neck should be, with a yawning hole. Its arms end with scythes but are mismatched, and its spiney lower body ends up becoming this massive mass of centipede-like legs that also look pretty flat. A much more feral looking horror than the Gravegouger, but still pretty nasty nonetheless. 

Yeah, y'know what? Torment's fun because of the Nightmare Horrors alone. Hypnox here sounds like he should be a legendary, the boss of these Nightmare Horrors, not just some twerp with a chain. Look at this thing, there's so much going on here. He kind of looks like he's got an anatomy of a dragon, except his mouth flares up with little cheek-wings, he's got spikes and Cthulhu tentacles for arms, his lower body just explodes into octopus tentacles, and I'm not even sure what's going on with Hypnox's neck and torso there. 

Mesmeric Fiend is a bit more simple, but I like just how weird this guy is. Those tentacle legs have such a weird Dr. Seuss vibe to them, those arms look very emaciated, I'm not sure how the anatomy of its body works... but most of all, that face. Just look at that nasty face, with the beady eyes, the pathetic looking maw, the little beak-nose and the horns pointing sideways from the sides of its head. Sadly, very few of the Nightmare Horrors have any sort of ominous flavour text. Just a single line would work well with any of these. 

Laquatus's Champion? So that dorky looking merfolk ambassador summons these things too? Okay, he just became cooler by like a factor of ten times in my head. Laquatus's Champion is this muscleman with a single visor-like eye, and a bunch of tentacles for arms. Probably not that terrifying to the Cephalids underwater... or are defined manly-man musculature actually as unsettling for octopus folk the way tentacles are for us humans? We'll never know.

Soul Scourge is probably the most underwhelming of the Nightmare Horrors, looking like just a generic gargoyle-like monster. I do like the extra pair of eyes and a very hard-to-see grinning mouth just behind the more traditional angry demon face. The anatomy of that second mouth in the background don't exactly make sense, and I'm not sure if the smaller head is attached to the upper jaw or something, but it's a nightmare beast. It's not supposed to make sense, it's just supposed to be spoopy. 

I like that this weakest Nightmare Horror is jsut a bunch of black wisps zipping through a forest from a beam of light. I didn't even notice that there's a humanoid figure trailing wings of shadow in the background. Is the Slithery Stalker the figure, or the little dark wisps? Are they both part of the same entity? Oh, if only we had just a little bit of explanation here!

Ichorid isn't a nightmare horror, he's a regular plebian run-of-the-mill horror. He sure is a monstrous Frankensteined abomination. I think his lower body is a snake, then we've got just a mass of thin arms, a pair of larger arms, and I'm not sure what's going on with that 'face'. Is that purple thing just the interior of an opened mouth, or is it its face in general? That tongue looks like it just materialized out of like a flat surface too. 

Organ Grinder is a regular zombie that's, like cannibalizing someone's organs and spewing poisonous goop. Not very interesting in writing, but just look at that face. No, seriously, just stop and look at the shape of that head, the shape of those eyes and nose, the open mouth... somehow, I feel like the Organ Grinder's face is far, far more unsettling than any of the nightmare horrors here. 

...and then we get Balthor the Stout. He's a dwarf. With a red beard. And vaguely Viking-based armour. Doing battle related things. His name is even part 'Thor'. I know all our dwarves are meant to be the same Tolkien stuff but we've had this exact same dwarf like five dozen times in M:TG already. 

Wait, Red gets nightmare beasts? How does this work? So I guess these creatures do manifest in reality, if Petradon's artwork is anything to go by? Petradon here has a pretty cool kaiju face with a ridged head and a bunch of cool tusks jutting out from around his mouth, but the coolest part has to be its limbs, which just explode into a network of... roots? Tentacles? They're certainly doing something that's turning the terrain under it into cracked lava. We don't get flavour text either, but the effect seems to imply that the Petradon is actually formed out of two entire lands, and when you destroy the Petradon it somehow reverts back to those lands. 

Petravark has an even more bizarre look. The head is a pretty cluttered dragon head with a fun flower-shaped crest, but the rest of the body? The main aprt of the body looks like a locomotive or one of those Chinese lion dance costumes, and it's just got a bunch of tentacles helping it to move forward like some sort of giant centipede. Neat. 

Taking its name from the real-life frog order Anura, we've got the Anurids! Anurid Scavenger is a typical showcase of these frog monsters. Big, warty, ugly, and with a distinct 'lower part of the front legs explodes in size like a 90's comic book armour design'. The Anurid Scavenger is pretty neat, with mottled skin and a fun flavour text. "Krosa's topmost bottom feeder" indeed!

Gurzigost is... it sure is a beast! I'm not sure what is going on here, but he's like this bizarre dinosaur-man that's digging a hole that he's waist-deep in. I'm not sure what the Gurzigost is or what it's doing, but it sure looks happy doing it. 

Wowm, yeah, I'm just not sure why the Nantuko are just not working for me. Nantuko Blightcaller is probably the coolest of the Nantuko in this block, but you'd think a race of mantis-people would be more appealing to me.

Narcissism is an amazing enchantment. It reminds me of that one centipede demon from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and also to some of the more creepy kami from Kamigawa, but just look at this. Look at this shambling plant-insect monster whose entire body is just nothing but detritus and spiky insect scythe arms, and yet it's got a mask with a drawn face of a smiling, demure lady on it. Simple-looking masks placed on creepy bodies are just that effective, even if I wouldn't probably immediately associate this image with narcissism per se. It sure works, though. 
_____________________________________

JUDGMENT


Judgment brings to us a semi-cycle of interesting creature type, the "Incarnation". I guess they are embodiments of a certain concept, not too dissimilar with other common creature types like 'avatar' or 'elemental', but these are of more metaphysical concepts. White gets Glory and Valor, two very White things to get incarnations of. These are actually reasonably fun designs, very much unmistakably in the aesthetic of White without being boring like most White cards. Glory has a pretty cool face that's just slit eyes on a somewhat porcelain-like head, a bunch of wings and a mermaid-like body that has wings instead of fins. Pretty cool. 

Valor, meanwhile, looks more like a tornado made manifest, with lightning bolts around its form and glowing eyes. Except being an 'incarnation', this is probably just an incarnation of all the valor of the proud warriors in the battlefield. All these incarnations have pretty badass flvaour texts, and all have effects that take place when they are in the graveyard. So I guess even when you destroy this incarnation of Valor or Glory, what they represent still spread over your other troops? Pretty dang cool. 

Obligatory bird-man general in Commander Eesha. This one at least has a cool flavour text. Not much to say here. The Aven really don't manage to give me too much to talk about here. 

The Cephalids, on the other hand... Cephalid Constable here uses a god damn ray gun to fight people, and I'm not sure what he's doing here but I think he's turning whoever is attacking him into purple lightning sparks. That's some Golden Age superhero comic weaponry right there, mister constable, sir. 

Oh, shit, what? This one is cool. Scalpelexis is... I'm not sure what it is, and it's just a 'beast', but what a beast it is! Some kind of hideous, bony fish with antennae, no eyes, a face covered in armour, bug fangs, and a tendril jutting out of the center of its 'head' that stabs humans in the ear. Does this thing like, read your mind or something? Judging by its effect -- milling cards from your opponent's deck -- it probably does. It looks like it's the sort of thing that would. It looks like it's the sort of thing Cephalids would keep as pets. Pretty neat.

Wonder is the Blue incarnation, and it's got that glorious mosaic-style colouration that Rebecca Guay is so fond of. I'm starting to at least pick out individual artist's styles, at least! Wonder here looks pretty appropriate with Rebecca Guay's art style, too, and the idea here is apparently that Wonder causes, well, everyone to gaze at it in wonder that they can suddenly fly. Again, the design itself wouldn't be that interesting, it's just an Aven with slightly weirder wings and face, but the artwork really makes it stand out. 

Blue gets a series of cards called 'Wormfang', and... I'm actually baffled at them. Since we don't have too many interesting cards to talk about, let's dissect all the Wormfang folks! They all share the mechanic of giving the summoning player a disadvantage, then recouping it when they die. Wormfang Behemoth is a "Nightmare Beast", so all these Wormfangs are somehow also the same sort of nightmares that are horrors in Black and terrain-altering monstrosities in Red. The first one, Wormfang Behemoth, is... it's a mutant anglerfish. I guess the 'wormfang' here refers to the lure, which is mutated and looks more like a hideous growth more than a lure. 

It's a bit more clear with the Wormfang Crab, whose main body is already a pretty fun, dynamic and exaggerated crab with one huge pincer claw and a huge shell that looks like it's a small island... and then it's got this little tendril with its own lamprey mouth. I'm not sure why this classifies as a nightmare, but on the other hand, I would be hard-pressed to make an argument why a giant island-crab with glowing eyes and a smiling leech-mouth isn't a nightmare. 

Wormfang Drake puts its 'wormfang' in a pretty cool place, its tail. It's probably perspective, but I kind of like the idea that the massive lamprey-tail might very well be the dominant head in this drake. 

Wormfang Manta looks positively pretty, with the manta fins being layered like an angel's wings or something, and I absolutely love just how exaggerated the ridges and fins are, while the Wormfang Manta in the background re-establishes how much the general manta ray silhouette is preserved. The 'wormfang' here isn't that evident, it's just a growth underneath the manta's mouth that's easily missed, sort of like an evil goatee. 

Wormfang Turtle is apparently created by Chainer's admirers, and it sure is a nasty-looking turtle. Ragged flippers, and a very tiny head with a 'grawr' face that looks more like a cutesy Godzilla artwork, it kind of works with the fact that this is meant to be an unsettling nightmare. The 'Wormfang' part here is just a second worm-head that bursts out of the Wormfang Turtle's chest. Not super exciting.

Wormfang Newt is fun, though. Its Wormfang is its own tongue, while the newt itself has grown to a dinosaurian size, has became a lot fatter and froggier than a newt would be, and has grown a rat-esque tail and a bunch of shaggy hair all over its head. It's apparently 'spawned by mages emulating the insane', so, yeah, of course it wouldn't actually have proper newt anatomy. 

Oh, okay, this is much more interesting. Balthor the Generic Dwarf gets turned into Balthor the Defiled, a zombie dwarf leading legions of the undead! That's a chilling flavour text, and a pretty fancy helmet. Okay, I like Balthor now, they're telling a story about him. 

Filth is Black's incarnation, and... yeah, that flavour text is neat, although the creature design is... all right? You'd think I'd be all excited about a giant mass of swamp filth and detritus given form, and that sure is a form that's appropriate for an incarnation of filth, but this is also a monster trope we've seen many times in M:TG in Black and Green. It's not like it's something fresh and new like Valor and Glory are. 

Masked Gorgon actually has a pretty cool gothic-emo style going on with that BDSM haeadgear, that one hand that ends in giant claws, and those ridged hair-tentacles. Toss in those bodies being hanged in the background, and I can actually vibe with this very goth gorgon lady. 

Guiltfeeder is the best Horror ever. Just look at this thing. A brain with two little eyes, a fanged mouth under all those tentacles, and the tentacles are just phasing through Handsome McBeard's head. It's not even burrowing or penetrating through it, it's just phasing through it, feeding on McBeard's guilt. I love just how stilted the legs are, like they're joined to a pelvis instead of a brain, and Guiltfeeder's even got a bunch of bent arms dangling under it. Low-key one of the coolest and nastiest horrors I've ever seen in this franchise. 

Anger's incarnation is just some bald midget holding a burning rod? I mean, that sure fits anger, so I'm not going to complain. I like Pixar's version of a short angry red humanoid better, though. 

Planar Chaos! Hey, that's going to be an expansion name down the line! I think! Here it's just an enchantment. Warrior Lady in the background just has her axe disintegrate into vapor, but Baldy McMuscles has his entire spine sprout some Resident Evil monster worm with a grinning fanged mouth. That's a pretty nasty mutation! 

See, do something interesting with dwarves! Even if it's just the Dwarven Driller swapping a pickaxe for a drill, at least it's something!

Jeska, Warrior Adept is main character Kamahl's sister and mentor. I actually like her design a fair bit for these generic-fantasy-main-character types. Mostly because she's weaponized her hair, tying a dagger onto the tip of her hair.

Okay, we've got a trio of 'gorgers', replacing the Petra-monsters for Red's nightmares. Soulgorger Orgg brings back the forgotten 'Orgg' tribe, but it's just an Orgg with a bunch of... tentacle arms with lamprey mouths? At least I hope those are tentacle arms. I'm not trying to make the obvious joke here, but that person being wrapped up by the Orgg looks like he or she's enjoying it juuuust a bit too much. 

Soulgorger Barbarian just has a Parasyte arm replacing his left arm, which comes with a lamprey mouth, and a funky Power Ranger shoulder armour with it. I'm not sure if these cards weren't originally meant to be 'Wormfang' cards. 

Worldgorger Dragon is kinda cute, I like just how beaky its mouth is, how weirdly posed the front legs are, and the 'wormfang' part here doesn't even come from the tail like I thought it did. No, the tail trails off into the bcakground, and that lamprey-fang actually pokes out of the claw-tips on its bat-wings. 

Anurid Brushhopper is a White/Green Anurid and I absolutely love its flavour text that explains its card ability. "It's so tough it can frighten itself into hiding". Other than that, Anurid Brushhopper is sure a neat frog monster, I do like that this one has basically the proportions of a gorilla, but the squashed face of a toad. 

Another Anurid, the Anurid Swarmsnapper is a bit lumpier and has more exaggerated proportions. I like the colours on this one, too, from the reds surrounding the eyes, to the pink feet that makes them feel so separate from the flabby, warty legs, the Anurid Swarmsnapper actually feels so much more gross than the other Anurids in the set. 

Ironshell beetle is pretty cute. It's basically just a giant beetle with an angry face, a nice pattern on its carapace and a bunch of extra weird parts like the red deer-horn-esque things, but apparently it also voluntarily gives its iron shell as shields to the random people living in the jungle. Unlike most other types of creatures with this sort of effect, this isn't even an 'on death' effect, but 'on coming into play'. I guess they just eject their molt and give them to the local centaurs or something? 

Another pair of Incarnations. Genesis is an interesting one, although I kinda wished that it was more of an abstract form instead of being so explicitly a centaur with glowing green energy. Genesis does have a weird root-beard, but I kinda wished that it was drawn more like Filth or Valor or Wonder, where they look like concepts that happen to take the approximate form of something. Genesis leans a bit too much into looking like a centaur. 

Brawn does this a bit better, looking definitely like an elephant, but the little details -- the lack of eyes, the mismatched horns, and the fun detail of little fungal balls growing on it and moss dripping off its trunk and ears really makes you note that this is an elephant made out of plant matter and stuff. Neat. 

And we close this block with the last two cards I find interesting. Thriss, Nantuko Primus is the obligatory Nantuko legendary card, and... and he sure is a Nantuko? None of the Nantuko are really all that exciting, after I appreciate their interesting anatomy and faces, they all just do their druid-y things. I appreciate that they exist, but I can't think of much to say about them. 

Crush of Worms is here mostly because I like the name. Those are some fun Wurms, too, with those giant chompers that look like giant teeth arranged in a circle. Mostly I just like the chunky teeth and the bizarrely Engrish name of "Crush of Worms".