Vic and Cigarettes, not good friends.
So, I've had a bit of a crazy week, which is why my next It's Not About The Answers post has been delayed, but two things that kind of slipped in struck me. The first is that I started smoking again because this has been a crazy week, and I needed it. The second is I started reading 52 because I hadn't bothered with the parts that don't involve Vic and Renee before.
Taken together, this is kind of funny, and makes my affection for the series even funnier.
This is typical Vic. He meets an enemy and starts to dig in. He finds everything he can about this new enemy to uncover whatever evils he can, and he uses that to expose this enemy, discredits it. But, no longer being in front of the cameras, he has to work with a smaller audience, work with what's in front of him. So, since he can't say all of this on television, he pesters Renee.
But with the constant lecturing, and developments that come later in the series (foreshadowed by Renee's line there), it's almost like he's lashing out, like this is the way his old anger is manifesting, through his new disposition, in the face of dying. Like he's trying to take the cause of it down with him, or something, even though he should've known the risks going in, and his old beliefs, if any bit of them remain, might contend that the responsibility for the actions which brought him to this point were his own.
So, while on the surface, Vic is lashing out against cigarettes, isn't he really just lashing out at himself? :D
I'll hopefully get the Blue Beetle #5-7 post done before this week's up. Things are lining up weirdly and I don't have nearly as much downtime as the vacation gave me, but we'll see.