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Comics for November 1
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.
Insulin's working, I feel much better. Rants, Capsules can be found on my
homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants
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.
Books of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Agents of
Atlas #4 (of 6), Blue Beetle #8
Ninja High School #144: Antarctic Press - The Naruto parallelism gets
turned up to 11 this issue, although Rock Lee wasn't nearly so busty. :)
Still, it works pretty well, using a nice flashback structure (left page is
flashback, right page is the current fight scene) along with the Naruto style
of padding with characterization. :) Recommended. $2.99/$4.05Cn
Gold Digger v3 #78: Antarctic Press - Things go boom nicely, although
unsurprisingly I found myself having trouble following the art at the
climax. Still, a good read what I could interpret. Recommended.
$2.99/$4.05Cn
Fallen Angel v2 #10: IDW - A pause in the arc for more backstory,
another tale from before the events of v1 #1. Effective use of grayscale in
the extensive flashback segments, although I wonder if the warmth of the
grays was intentional irony, or just an attempt to lean towards sepiatone.
Recommended. $3.99
The Irredeemable Ant-Man #2: Marvel - Well, several pertinent questions
are answered this issue, and it looks like we won't be getting too much more
backfill flashback stuff from this point on. Anyway, while there's some good
bits in here, I'm having trouble warming to the protagonist. As in, he's not
really enough of a jerk to enjoy on that level...he's just a putz. Sure,
he's not heroic, but neither is he much of anything else. Low-intensity
heel, who's not even together enough to be consistently unlikeable. Not so
much irredeemable as unremarkable. Mildly recommended. $2.99/$3.75Cn
Beyond #5 (of 6): Marvel - This felt pretty padded. Like, it fills out
22 pages without resorting to huge splash pages all over the place, but it
still feels like not much happened. Other than Hank Pym being a much bigger
putz than the new Ant-Man. See? Leave the jerkitude to the professionals,
kid. Mildly recommended. $2.99/$3.75Cn
Agents of Atlas #4 (of 6): Marvel - Ah, back in fine form, with action,
snappy patter and post-pulp goodness. I enjoyed the backstory dump of #3,
don't get me wrong, but this was much more to my liking. Strongly
recommended. $2.99/$3.75Cn
52 #26 (of 52): DC - Ah, the end of the first half. Not that there's
any particular big event to mark it. I'd be glad to see the return of a
particular character with connections to the Question, but given this book's
track record, I have to wonder if he'll get blown to pieces or something in
two weeks. They do love smashing easter eggs with sledgehammers here. While
there's bits of several stories in here, it's mostly Fawcett Week, and a lot
of nostalgia. Well, other people's nostalgia, anyway, I'm not old enough to
have read the Fawcett books the first time around. :) Recommended.
$2.50/$3.50Cn
Outsiders #42: DC - Sivana is just everywhere lately, ain't he? Very
old school, though. I mean, after all this proactive post-post-Crisis style
reinventing stuff the title has seen since One Year Later kicked off, and now
we're getting classic "beard the mad scientist in his lair and face his
implausible creations" stuff. Okay, we got some of that with Mallah and the
Brain, but the trappings were a little too modern. This issue gets all the
bits in place. Recommended. $2.99/$4.00Cn
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #23: DC - A pretty dark issue,
and I'm not sure I like how the Subs reboots are being used. Still, it ends
with a big badaboom that ticks another Historic Legion Event onto the clock.
Maybe. Or it could all be a dodge, and the event delayed for months. :)
Anyway, it was okay, but I don't feel all that bad for having had to wait a
week for it. Mildly recommended. $2.99/$4.00Cn
Blue Beetle #8: DC - But I'm glad I didn't have to wait for this one.
The dialogue snaps, crackles AND pops, which more than makes up for the plot
advancing only a tiny bit. There's also a fair amount of retcon implied
here, but I suppose no DC comics that took place in the late 80s are safe
from wholesale rewriting. Strongly recommended. $2.99/$4.00Cn
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 11/1:
Still missing Keif Llama V2.1, Stinz Tribals (which Diamond's system
says "will come in" June 14, and nothing else), Gold Digger Perfect Memory
v5, Gold Digger Tangent #2, Devil's Panties #3 and 5, Elric #4, the
Transformers Beast Wars poster, Fred Perry's S-Guild #1, the Amelia Rules
TPBs, Ninja High School #142, Dr. Debunko: the Short Stories, Transformers
Spotlight: Nightbeat. Add She-Hulk v2 #13, another major store-shorting.
Diamond really sucks, yay de facto monopolies.
Awards:
"Ol' Bushi Bras" Award to Ninja High School #144 (Okay, she's a ninja, not
a bushi, and she doesn't seem to WEAR a bra, but I had to make the
tortured pun work SOMEHOW)
"Ten Summoner's Tails" Award to Gold Digger v3 #78
"Does It Mean You Have To Throw Your Body Off A Building?" Award to Fallen
Angel v2 #10
"Wonder If The Second Guy Read The Manual First?" Award to The Irredeemable
Ant-Man #2
"Old Flame" Award to Beyond #5 (of 6)
"Fearful Syncrety" Award to Agents of Atlas #4 (of 6)
"Tawky Tawny, Meet Sulky Sobek" Award to 52 #26 (of 52)
"Angling For A Threesome?" Award to Outsiders #42
"Rokyn It Old School" Award to Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #23
"Some Settling May Occur" Award to Blue Beetle #8
Dave Van Domelen, "Is [the Scarab] talking to you now?" "Oh yeah." "And?" "You don't watch your blood sugar, you'll be *diabetic* in three years. It also considers you a potential *threat* and wants me to kill you." - Dan Garrett and Blue Beetle, Blue Beetle #8
no subject
They haven't strictly speaking retconned any Blue Beetle history, at least not yet (modulo Dan Garrett having a granddaughter, possibly; I seem to recall no offspring but I'd have to go back and check). I do note they're conspicuously not mentioning the two-issue story where the scarab forced Dan back to life and had him attacking Ted. But then, they pretty well ignored that in Countdown, too, where Ted had the thing sitting around in his living room.
no subject
One MAJOR DAMN RETCON which I forgot to add: Ted didn't get the scarab when Dan was buried in the cave-in on Pago Island. Because Dan was BURIED IN A CAVE-IN. So it's not like Ted tried to use the scarab and it gave him the cold shoulder.