dvandom

                    Dave's Unspoilt Capsules and Awards
         The Week's Picks and Pans, plus Awards of Dubious Merit

Standard Disclaimers: Please set appropriate followups.  Recommendation does
not factor in price.  Not all books will have arrived in your area this week.
Insert clever bit here that no one reads.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

First Looks:
     My comics shop subscribes to the First Looks program, in which a
selection of titles from DC and Marvel for the next week are shipped a week
early for preview purposes.  I usually have time to read some of them while
the comics are sorted, although they don't always arrive on time.

March 15, 2006:

     New Mangaverse #3 (of 5): Marvel - Big slaughterfest, some angst, and
then the opening bell for round two.  It looks pretty, but there's very
little substance.  Essentially, this is where most of the "pad a four issue
story out to five" bloat lives.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Annihilation: Prologue #1: Marvel - This is the big crossover event for
people who don't want to buy into Civil War, basically.  Although it's not
really a crossover, since no pre-existing titles are involved.  Anyway, this
sets up the Big Threat and kicks over some anthills to get stuff started.  A
decent read.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99/$5.75Cn
     Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6: Marvel - I definitely missed an
important plot point somewhere, and it makes the timing seem odd, especially
after last issue where the timing WAS odd.  Okay story otherwise.
Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Untold Tales of the New Universe: Justice #1: Marvel - A good
introduction to both the charcter as he was introduced and what he turned
into after his retcon.  Of course, I really only know him from PAD's later
use of him in other titles, but it feels right.  And it works well for
someone who never read the original series, too.  :)  Recommended.
$2.99/$4.25Cn 


OOPS!:
     It turns out that my pull adds for March never got entered into the
store's system, plus I failed to notice that Peter David was writing the new
Red Sonja mini so never even asked for it.  This section catches up on some
of the fallout of that.  

     I (Heart) Marvel: Outlaw Love #1: Marvel - Back when I was first getting
into comics, the Answer was one of the big new villains in Spectacular
Spider-Man, and I've always had a soft spot for him, although I didn't know
until this was solicited that he came back from the dead.  Nicieza tells a
good (if somewhat purple in its prose) tale of dysfunctional love between the
Answer and dome-headed former Headman Ruby Thursday, with Bullseye around so
that the cover could have someone people would recognize.  Sadly, the art has
serious problems, especially in the scratchy inking and murky coloring (which
all seem to be done by artist Proctor).  The trade dress that puts the price
on the back of all of these one-shots is annoying.  Recommended.
$2.99/$4.25Cn  
     I (Heart) Marvel: Masked Intentions #1: Marvel - Nicieza uses the Cable
& Deadpool style recap page for this one, which is two short pieces with a
New Warriors theme to them.  In one, Squirrel Girl tries to win the heart of
Speedball and faces one of the dumber villains from the original Speedball
comic.  In the other, Justice and Firestar deal with pre-wedding jitters.
Art by Paco Medina and Mike Norton respectively, both okay.  And I will note
that yes, all the majors in the first story are among the last characters
designed for Marvel by Ditko.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Bomb Queen #1: Image - High concept of this is, "What if a Supervillain
won, took control of a city, and no one really cared enough to oppose her
once she killed the first bunch to try?"  Bomb Queen seems to be a villain of
the gadget variety...if she has any power, it's the ability to endure
repeated bikini waxing.  Yes, this is a Mature Readers book, for both
excessive violence (the name is BOMB Queen, after all) and nudity (although,
oddly, despite numerous examples of bare breasts, you never quite see any of
BQ's Naughty Bits, unless you count her butt).  The story starts years after
BQ has taken over, she's bored, and faces no real opposition.  Of course,
opposition is coming, but it's clear that everyone's hat is at least gray, if
not black.  The text piece in the back tries a little *too* hard to point out
that this isn't just a T&A book, that there's serious social issues being
addressed.  I mean, yeah, it's clear that the issue of "what happens if no
one CARES that a supervillain has taken over, since things seem to be okay if
you don't annoy her" is there, with subtle and not-so-subtle parallels so
governments both here and abroad.  It's a shaky start, but gets points for
going with something not often used.  Recommended.  $3.50/$4.15Cn 
     Red Sonja vs. Thulsa Doom #1-2: Dynamite - After my long-winded reviews
above, I'm going to have to disappoint with this one's terseness.  Coming
into this series, I didn't know much about Red Sonja, especially how this new
company was going to develop her (the 25 cent special didn't really help).
And while I picked up most of her background over the course of two issues,
for the majority of the first issue Sonja's practically a cipher, defined by
kicking butt and bitching about how her people have lost their warrior
spirit.  Of course, being ruled by Edmund Blackadder might do that to a
country.  Thulsa Doom is more developed and more interesting, though.  And
the art by Will Conrad is pretty good (although the nude fight scene in #2
got annoying after a few pages, with all the coy "water just barely covers
her bits" blocking getting old fast).  Mildly recommended.  $3.50

Capsules:
     Short, relatively spoiler-free reviews of books I actually bring home
(as opposed to reading in preview form in the shop or online).  If I get a
book late due to distributor foulups or whatever, I'll put it in the Missing
section.

     Teen Titans #33: DC - *Not* One Year Later.  And either I wasn't paying
very good attention, my memory is flaking out on me, or something very
important happened between Superboy and Wonder Girl in a book I don't read.
Hm.  Ah well.  This is your basic "introspection on the way between fight
scenes" issue as Superboy and Nightwing get some quality time together
between issues of Infinite Crisis, although there's some definite setup for
OYL events.  Johns and Wolfman turn in a story that does stop quite a bit to
do flashbacks or exposition, but is a generally good read.  Nauck's pencils
are at his usual level, but the trio of inkers results in a bit of variation
around the mean.  Recommended.  $2.50/$3.50Cn
     Tom Strong #36: DC/ABC - Moore and Sprouse are back for this issue,
which crosses over with the final arc of Promethea (making it One Year Late,
I suppose).  It says many of the same things as that arc, but more concisely
and less pretentiously.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.00Cn
     Cable & Deadpool #26: Marvel - Prelude to a big event.  And despite what
the recap page says, there's plenty of funny (and some icky) here.  Lan
Medina takes over the art this issue.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Thunderbolts #100: Marvel - Back to the previous volume numbering.  An
oversized big cosmic slam bang, then reprints of the origins one-shot and
some promo pieces.  Recommended.  $3.99/$5.75Cn
     Bomb Queen #2: Image - Well, aside from a weak "failure of support"
visual gag, and a nip-slip or two, the mature readers label leans mainly on
gore this time out.  And language, I suppose...I've gotten inured enough to
that stuff that I need to actually look for it specifically these days,
though.  Cussin' has lost its power through overuse.  The story kinda coasts,
reinforcing the points of #1 without really bringing much new to the table
(the main new point is seeming proof that superhumans do exist in this
setting, not just gadget-users).  I'm wondering if Robinson is trying too
hard here...there's humor, but I still haven't seen anything on the level of
his Adventures of Evil & Malice.  And it's too violence-porn-goofy to really
be a serious story either.  Mildly recommended.  $3.50/$4.15Cn
     Retro Rocket #1: Image - Wow, conceptual whiplash from Bomb Queen to
here.  :)  Bedard sets up a post-war future that feels like it grew from art
deco retro-future into Heavy Gear stylings (yes, I know HG itself is highly
derivative of Votoms, but the look here is closer to HG than ATV).  The hero
is part of that left-behind future (watch as I mangle tenses for fun and no
profit!), trying to still be useful but...well, not being totally
unsuccessful, but not being all he'd like to be.  Now things are changing,
and there's strong foreshadowing that he's gonna see a "retired Bolo forced
to the front" story from the inside.  Seriously, you can almost see the plot
device deploying to render him the last mech on the field.  :)  Okay, I
should stop before I spoiler too much more.  But, dude.  THEME.  The
grizzled, superannuated veteran who suddenly becomes important because things
change, the new ways don't work anymore, and he's the only one who can do
things the old way.  Classic.  Finally, I like the art by Orfalas, he pulls
off the multiple styles well.  :)  Strongly recommended.  $2.99/$3.50Cn
     Invincible #29: Image - Mainly a big, bloody slugfest with a somewhat
anticlimactic ending.  Important both on a character and a story level, but
not really much to talk about without going into serious spoilers.  The Capes
backup advances about as slowly as you'd expect with four plotlines sharing
six pages, including a splash page.  Recommended.  $2.99/$3.50Cn
     GIJoe/Transformers v3 #1: Devil's Due - Sort of follows on from v2, but
there's a strong feeling of "Whoops, we decided we didn't really want to go
that way after all".  And then proceeds to probably go tht way anyway, but
with new justification.  I got the Ng cover (will there ever be a
Transformers comic again without multiple covers?) with Bumblebee being
chased by every Decepticon.  The plot setup hearkens back to G2 #2 in some
ways, and that genie never goes back into the bottle.  The new menace being
set up is a little tortured in execution, but I suppose no worse than the
character's original origins.  Recommended.  $2.95
     Transformers: Infiltration #3: IDW - There's basically two plots running
through this issue.  In the A plot, Ratchet deals with the consequences of
involving humans in the Autobot/Decepticon war, and it's a lot of talking in
boxes.  Some intriguing ideas for setup, but definitely on the dry side.  As
if to try to balance that out, the B plot mainly involves Decepticons running
around blowing stuff up for reasons that become apparent as they continue to
boomify things.  As I pointed out a while back in a review of Iron Man, a mix
of all talk and all boom may seem balanced in theory, it doesn't always work.
It sort of works here, but not as well as I think Furman hoped.  Also, the
art from Su continues to be good except for the blatantly pasted in Autobot
and Decepticon symbols that really grate on my aesthetic sensibilities.  Got
the B cover, as it was the one stuck in my pull and the A cover didn't make
it out onto the shelf.  Somewhere between mildly recommended and recommended.
$2.99  [Later note: Hasbro is mandating the pasted in symbols, apparently
they either want to sabotage the art or a miscommunication is resulting in
the things looking worse than they absolutely have to.]
     Keif Llama V2.5: Aeon - A bunch of short pieces tied together by a
single conceit, I liked the flow of this one.  And I also liked the hints
that Keif's aura of always being right may have some holes in it.
Recommended.  $2.95/$4.25Cn
     

Gone Missing:
     Stuff that came out some places this week and that I wanted to buy, but
couldn't find for whatever reason, so people don't have to email me asking
"Why didn't you review X?"  (If it's neither here nor in the section above,
though, feel free to ask, I might have forgotten about it!)

     Current list as of 3/8:

     Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards GN, Exalted #1, Keif Llama
V2.1, Captain America and the Falcon: Secret Empire TPB, PS238 #14 and 15.

Awards:

Best Book: Retro Rocket #1

"Must Not Make Head Joke" Award to I (Heart) Marvel: Outlaw Love

"There's An Even Worse Head Joke Possible Here" Award to I (Heart) Marvel:
     Masked Intentions

"And Need I Even GO There?" Award to Bomb Queen #1

"This Is F-U-N" Award to Red Sonja vs. Thulsa Doom #1-2

"Remembrance Of Futures Past" Award to Teen Titans #33

"What DO You Do After The End Of The World?" Award to Tom Strong #36

"But Are They Made Of Gummyplas?" Award to Cable & Deadpool #26

"You Broke It, He Bought It" Award to Thunderbolts #100

"You Can Keep The Drumstick, I Prefer The...Too Obvious?" Award to Bomb
     Queen #2

"Hey, It's Only Fair, She Gets To Look Under HIS Hood" Award to Retro Rocket
     #1

"Taking The Long View" Award to Invincible #29

"Where's Coop?" Award to GIJoe vs. Transformers v3 #1

"What Does Bumblebee's Holoavatar Say About Him?" Award to Transformers: 
     Infiltration #3

"That's Just Prime" Award to Keif Llama V2.5
Dave Van Domelen, "You'd think someone would let *me* know before scrambling my men." - General Collins, Retro Rocket