Comics for November 8, 2006

[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.
80F today.  Amazingly, office AC was on.  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): None.

     Gen13 v3 #2: DC/Wildstorm - Yay, variant covers.  I didn't care, so I
kept the one that was put in my pull.  Anyway, we see that the scumbags
behind the murdersexkill ring are either playing a much deeper game or are
insane in ways that should not have let them build up the structure that
created the Gen-Actives.  I'm thinking they just like acting asinine.  And,
frankly, it's overdone for most of the issue, but Simone settles down into
something a bit more like her Secret Six work by the end, hopefully the trend
will continue.  Recommended, mainly for the last third.  $2.99/$4.00Cn
     52 #27 (of 52): DC - Well, one character continues to get defamed,
another sees some turnaround, and another is given a death sentence, but I
expect all three main plots from this issue will end up dovetailing at some
point.  While I liked the turnaround plotline, the defamation one is annoying
for more than just the fact a goodguy's been turned into a serial killer.
Now he's getting continuity implants that make him Extra Special, when part
of what I liked about him was that his humble origins combined with
circumstance to make him important.  Mildly recommended.  $2.50/$3.50Cn
     Green Arrow #68: DC - The end of the flashback training sequence story,
mainly an internally monologued running fight scene.  Winick's writing
carries it fairly well, and while McDaniels's blocking works, the detail art
is still pretty ugly in bad ways.  Mildly recommended.  $2.99/$4.00Cn
     Teen Titans #40: DC - The theme of betrayal is cranked up to, well,
maybe 9.  Not 11 quite yet.  And there's a barrel full of red herrings to
boot.  Unfortunately, I don't recall enough about the first few arcs of this
title to tell if they're cheating with the Big Reveal (i.e. revealing
something that was retconned in) or not.  It still feels kinda left field,
though.  Mildly recommended.  $2.99/$4.00Cn
     Superman #657: DC - The Arion thing finally comes to the front, as we
switch between him talking to Superman et al and depictions of the various
dire events he portends.  Unfortunately, some of the drama is sapped by the
realization that Arion had to time-travel to give his warning, so why would
he give it too late to do any good, despite his snotty proclamations to the
contrary?  Okay, that's a little spoilery, but it's too key to my reaction to
omit.  Besides, the fact of the time traveling was shown several issues ago.
:)  Mildly recommended.  $2.99/$4.00Cn
     She-Hulk v2 #13: Marvel - "I Married An Otherkin".  Heh.  Ahem.  Anyway,
most of the issue is a sort of "Thanos's Greatest Hits" retrospective as Jen
tries to get to the truth of the matter of Starfox's guilt or innocence.
Burchett's art is workmanlike, but lacks a certain spark.  Slott's story
suffers a bit from the need to summarize so much, but it still has some good
moments, like Pug and Book comparing the ways their lives have sucked
lately.  Recommended.  $2.99/$3.75Cn
     Bullet Points #1 (of 5): Marvel - High concept: what if Professor
Erskine was assassinated a day earlier, with some MPs killed in the crossfire
as well?  JMS follows the rules of a counterfactual, but this is not factual,
so I suppose that makes it a counterfictional?  Okay, it's an extended What
If? story, no new terms needed, but still.  :)  This is a bit ambitious in
scope, though, not content to focus on how WWII unfolded for Steve Rogers for
the entire series, instead skipping ahead to the 60s before the issue is even
over.  There's a risk that this will end up feeling more like a summary of a
series than an actual series, hopefully things will settle down next issue
and linger on one era.  Tentatively recommended.  $2.99/$3.75Cn
     Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes II #1 (of 8): Marvel - Has to be an 8
issue series, so that each issue can have one of the letters in "Avengers"
dominating the cover, as with the first AEMH series.  The timeframe jumps
ahead to just after Vision's induction onto the team, although we do get a
few pages of recap as Hawkeye fills Vision in on the events that happened
between the end of AEMH I's timeframe and the start of this series.  As
before, the issue of security clearance and government paranoia regarding the
team seems to be dominating, although there might be a B-plot for some new
dustup scenes.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99/$4.75Cn
     Marvel Legacy: the 1980s Handbook: Marvel - And this one looks like,
well, OHOTMU (Deluxe Edition) from the 80s, only with some of the worst Sal
Buscema cover art I've ever seen.  Maybe he was trying to stylebite the
original covers and the style clash resulted in fugliness.  Ironically (and
intentionally, according to the inside front cover), the focus is rather
different from that of the original series, including more obscure characters
and many who weren't even part of the Marvel Universe proper (OHOTMUDE only
included non-MU characters who had crossovers with the MU, IIRC...and no, I'm
not going to scour through my old issues to confirm that right now).  Some of
the big guns are covered, of course, like Spider-Man, Avengers, and FF (but
no X-Men, oddly...like, dude, the 80s were all about X-Men.  I suppose
Wolverine's entry took their spot).  It ends with the usual Where Are They
Now? section on the inside back cover.  Still, despite not being
representative of the actual OHOTMUDE from the time, it's a good resource for
getting a broader feel for how Marvel operated in the 80s.  A grab-bag, it
has things like New Universe (represented by DP7, Nightmask and Psi-Force) or
licensed properties (such as Crystar or the Followers of Light (Shogun
Warriors)) in addition to Marvel U characters and organizations.  Ah, and I
see now why the Spaceknights got such a short entry in OHOTMU A-Z, they get
three whole pages here.  Recommended.  $4.99/$6.00Cn  (Hm, could I work in
just one more parenthetical for this capsule?  Sure, why not!)


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 11/8:

     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.  She-Hulk #13 still hasn't been shipped to the store,
but they let me buy the First Looks copy (which I should have thought to ask
about LAST week, d'oh).


Awards:

"The Barber Of Evil" Award to Gen13 v3 #2

"Raising Cain" Award to 52 #27 (of 52)

"How Does He Keep From Cutting His Bowstring?" Award to the cover of
     Green Arrow #68

"A Whiter Shade Of Martian" Award to Teen Titans #40

"All Of Me...Why Not Take All Of Me" Award to Superman #657

"Maybe Venus Is Available For Counseling?" Award to She-Hulk v2 #13

"So, Where'd Rick Go?" Award to Bullet Points #1 (of 5)

"These Events Do Not Sit Well..." Award to Avengers Earth's Greatest Heroes
     II #1 (of 8)

"No, Not THAT Captain Hero" Award to Marvel Legacy: the 1980s Handbook

   Dave Van Domelen, "Oh, look. They have a tank." - Fairchild, Gen13 #2

Comments

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Nope. But they did say that they tried to avoid too many copies of entries that were in the recently-released Essential OHOTMU. Only about a dozen entries AFAICT are redundant with OHOTMUDE, and Wolverine and Longshot are the only representatives of X-Stuff in general.