First Looks for Oct 13

[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.
Ordered the huge DC Encyclopedia.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

First Looks:
     Every so often, I will take my PDA and its folding keyboard down to the
comic shop on the weekend and type up reviews of the stuff I read out of the
First Looks pile.  Books I end up buying will be moved down to the Capsules
section on Wednesdays.  If I don't say I'm not buying it, then I'm planning
to buy it.

     X-Force #3: Marvel - Well, they keep putting this in the First Looks
pack, so I'll keep watching the trainwreck.  Speaking of which, the star of
the first scene is a female martial artist in an improbable (if fully
covering) costume with painfully bad dialogue and the codename/title...Lady
Anime.  Is it really necessary to read further?  Well, no, but that won't
stop me.  There are just the tiniest hints here and there of good writing, of
interesting ideas.  But they're smothered by Idiot Plot and standard Liefeld
art.  I wouldn't take this home for free, but it costs $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Iron Man v3 #89: Marvel - Part four of the Singularity arc.  It's got
some good points to it, and offers an okay resolution (although it has to be
cagey about the cause of AD since it doesn't come out after the end of AD),
The "voice" of the writing is too unvaried, though, everyone seems to talk
like Happy Hogan.  Oh, and there's a bizarre coloring error in the very last
panel...a character's gums are colored as teeth and his teeth as open mouth.
Heh.  Not picking it up, in any case.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Captain America #32: Marvel - Part four of THIS book's AD tie-in.
It's...okay.  The big Shock Twist was pretty much what I expected after
seeing the end of #31, and the main villain wasn't really as impressive as he
should be.  Mildly recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     She-Hulk #8: Marvel - Captain Ultra keeps appearing on these covers...so
does Howard the Duck.  It'd be nice if the covers had any relationship to the
story inside.  Okay, I finally found something to really like about Bobillo's
character redesigns...Guardsman armors redesigned to evoke three-piece
suits.  MUAHAHAHAHA.  Although I hope the visual changes to one of the other
characters fade soon.  Anyway, not the best story in the series, but a good
one nonetheless.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Justice League Elite #4: DC - Back to the subject of covers, this one's
very good.  It's symbolic of events in the issue, even has a passing
resemblance to a specific scene, without actually being a literal take on the
issue.  Excellent.  The issue itself is okay.  I think it relies a bit too
much on reader knowledge of pre-Elite history for the characters (something
that could have been fixed with a few more words here and there).  Still not
picking this series up, but it's decent.  $2.50/$3.85Cn

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.

     Pending.  Other than those above with a recommendation, I expect to get
GIJoe vs Transformers v2 #2, Astro City A Visitor's Guide, Fallen Angel #16,
Green Arrow #43, JSA #66, Tom Strong #29, Gold Digger #56, How Not To Draw
Manga, Neotopia v4 #3 (so soon?), Transformers Energon #28.  Whew.  Heavy
week.  Especially if the DC Encyclopedia copy I ordered comes in (the
original solicit didn't grab me, but seeing the copy someone else ordered
convinced me to get it).

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!)

     Pending.

Awards:

Best Book: Pending.

   Dave Van Domelen, "Don't make me use my repulsors, sir." - Guardsman "suit"