Comics for March 29, First Looks April 5

[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.
Spring break is over, NOW it's warm.  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.

April 5, 2006:

     Justice League Unlimited #20: DC - Storrie writes, Burchett draws.  A
little After School Special in its approach, but a decent done in one story.
$2.25/$3.00Cn
     New Excalibur #6: Marvel - A bit on the meandering side at times, but it
has a plot and actually moves that plot forward in significant ways.  I'm not
ready to say Claremont's back on top of his game yet, but he's definitely
stopped sucking.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Moon Knight v3? #1: Marvel - I think it's volume 3, anyway, leaving out
Fist of Khonshu and minis.  The pseudo-McFarlane art may hearken back to
Stephen Platt's work on the previous unlimited series, but it's one of the
minuses of those issues, not a plus.  Fortunately, Finch's interior art is
better than his cover.  Huston's writing, on the other hand, is insanely
decompressed.  It's a character sketch like they make you do in high school,
with generic mook-busting going on under the captions.  On the plus side, it
lets you know the character, and that Huston knows the character, but that's
about it.  It could be done almost as well in four pages, including using the
fourth page for what is here the last page splash.  And that'll probably be
recapped next issue anyway, so the is eminently skippable.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Marvel Zombies #5 (of 5): Marvel - Huh, normally they don't offer final
issues as First Looks.  Anyway, looks like you really are what you eat.  Oh,
and while the cover is cute, it has little to do with the story inside.
$2.99/$4.25Cn
     Annihilation: Silver Surfer #1 (of 4): Marvel - A bit on the talky side,
but that suits the character.  Not a bad read, and the art is good, but
neither did I find it compelling.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Young Avengers #11: Marvel - Lotsa secret origin infodump.  It's so
clear and complete that at least SOME of it has GOT to be wrong :)  Things
are getting interesting.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Marvel Team-Up #19: Marvel - A brief interlude in the past to set up a
return to a plot thread that Kirkma has let lay fallow for a while.  Didn't
like the art at first, but it grew on me.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn


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.

     Gold Digger v3 #73: Antarctic Press - It's all about family this time,
as we're back to the serious plot stuff.  A pause for remembrance, and Perry
does it well.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.05Cn
     Superman #650: DC - One of the problems of my "A pox on both your
multititle crossover franchises" approach to Superman and Batman is that I
may occasionally miss something that it's worth braving the "Part 23 of 35"
storylines for.  Confining itself to a mere 8 parts across only TWO books,
"Up, Up, and Away!" has Busiek and Johns look at Superman, one year later.
Good if occasionally stiff art from Pete Woods rounds out the team.  This
didn't make it to the shelf at my local comic shop, but I was able to find it
at Hastings (a regional media chain) over the weekend.  A promising start.
Recommended.  $2.50/$3.50Cn
     Action #837: DC - Part two of "Up, Up, and Away!".  Same team as part
one, and the premise continues to be played out pretty well, although part
three may see a shift in premise.  Good story, good art, recommended.
$2.50/$3.50Cn 
     Blue Beetle #1: DC - On the one hand, Giffen is playing around with
multiple timeshifted plots, which can be annoying (especially since we seem
to be getting part 1 and part 6 of some arc this issue).  On the other hand,
he's in fine form on the part 1 stuff with the new cast of the book.  Just
reading the non-superhero parts is worth the price of admission, and I
suppose the rest will make sense eventually.  Cully Hamner does the art, and
it looks very little like what I remember about his style...and I definitely
like the changes.  Strongly recommended (yes, it has problems, but a book
that makes me laugh out loud multiple times in the store deserves the nod).
$2.99/$4.00Cn
     OHOTMU A-Z #3 (of 12): Marvel - It's so nice getting to find out what
happened in crappy storylines without having to actually read them.  And what
happened in the "good but so old I'd never find them for less than the price
of my car" storylines, for that matter.  Recommended if you can find it,
OHOTMU as a series seems to get short-shipped a lot.  $3.99/$5.75Cn
     FF #536: Marvel - Civil War tie-in.  But once that bit of angst is out
of the way, it's clobberin' time!  Heh.  Recommended for the non-CW stuff.
This is my last issue, though.  Getting out before the real crossover crap
hits the fans.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Iron Man v5 #6: Marvel - Well, it beat Elric #3 AND the heat death of
the universe.  Was it worth the wait?  Well, it'd be really hard to be worth
that much wait.  Would this have been worth the six months it was supposed to
have?  Not really that, either.  It was a decent ending, with plot and
emotional closure, but it probably would have had MORE impact in FEWER
pages.  Mildly recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Thing #5: Marvel - Last issue, Ben Learned His Lesson.  But now comes
the hard part...making that lesson a part of him and knowing what it really
means.  He's on the right path, but it's abundantly clear this issue that
he's still got a long way to go.  Mind you, this isn't all Life Lessons,
Slott mixes in plenty of action and classic schtick.  Recommended.
$2.99/$4.25Cn 
     Fallen Angel v2 #4: IDW - Conflict of many varieties, and more of the
Secret Origin stuff (I'd hesitate to say we've seen it all yet, but we got a
BIG chunk this time around).  Recommended.  $3.99
     Invincible #30: Image - Fallout and moving on, and lots of musing on the
nature of what constitutes a long time.  Plus, the Capes backup is doing
quite a lot with very little space.  Recommended.  $2.99/$3.50Cn
     Keif Llama V2.6: Aeon - A full length story full of intrigue, romance
and uncertain motivations.  A good read.  Hey, not everything demands a
dissertation.  :)  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 3/29:

     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,
and Alice In Wonderland #2.  Add Essential Nova, but I did get Essential
Godzilla.  Will review it next week after I've had time to read the 24 issues
it contains.  
     Oddly, almost everything on my missing list shows as available on
Diamond's computers.  I guess they have copies lying around, considering THEY
NEVER SENT THE ONES I ORDERED THE FIRST TIME AROUND.  Sigh.

Awards:

Best Book: Blue Beetle #1

"The Old Silent Treatment" Award to Gold Digger v3 #73

"Zeezeezeezee" Award to Superman #650

"And I Shall Shed My Light Over Dark Evil" Award to Action Comics #837

"Spinal Trap" Award to Blue Beetle #1

"Ugliest Mary Sue Ever" Award to All-New OHOTMU A-Z #3 (of 12)

"We're Not Worthy!" Award to Fantastic Four #536

"Like Most Tech, It's Obsolete Before It Even Hits Shelves" Award to Iron Man
     v5 #6

"Pawnd j00" Award to The Thing #5

"By This Time, My Lungs Were Aching For Air" Award to Fallen Angel v2 #4

"They Grow Up So Fast" Award to Invincible #30

"Where's The Other One?" Award to Keif Llama V2.6

   Dave Van Domelen, "You learned to say 'spawn camper' in SWEDISH." "That's because the Swedes are FILTHY SPAWN CAMPERS!" - Brenda and Paco, Blue Beetle #1

Comments

[gwox.livejournal.com]

I object! I happen to be a very neat camper, thank you! It is the Finns who sneak into my campsite at night and leave candy bar wrappers and cigarette butts and lacy underwear in unsightly heaps about my tent!

Gary, aka gwox, aka The Swede