First Look Comics for Oct 27

[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.
Protoformproject.com is down, sigh.  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-Men #163: Marvel - Big multi-front fight scene, presaged by a
Convenient New Power Acquisition by one of the characters.  It's not bad, but
neither is it really that good.  $2.25/$3.25Cn
     Amazing Spider-Man #513: Marvel - And Sins Past continues, with
Spider-Man fighting Snake Eyes on the cover.  Or something.  :)  The story
inside is okay.  It has some good points, if you can ignore the fundamental
problems with the arc (which I will not go into here, there's hundred-post
threads about it already).  $2.25/$3.25Cn
     JLA #107: DC - And Busiek comes on the book with a bang, following up on
JLA/Avengers, among other miniseries.  It's mostly a quiet story about the
importance of quiet stories, with the main villains of the arc not even
showing up until the last page.  But it's a good read.  Recommended.
$2.25/$3.50Cn
     Planetary #21: DC/Wildstorm - Cover looks more like Promethea than
Planetary, heh.  This is approprate, however, as a LOT of this issue is given
over to Moore-ish "essay on weirdness with oddball scenery provided by the
artist" stuff a la Promethea.  There *is* an important plot point here,
however, something that's been building since, oh, Ellis first took over
StormWatch, if not earlier.  Another important quiet story, I suppose.
Recommended for the prime revelation and the lovely art, but not for the
metaphysical rambling.  $2.95/$4.50Cn

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.

     According to the Midtown Comics list, I expect to get JLA #107,
Outsiders #17, Planetary #21, You Can Draw Mecha, Blue Monday Painted Moon #3
(wouldn't be surprised if that gets left off Diamond's shipment), and maybe
Amelia Rules or the DC Encyclopedia, depending on how quickly reorders are
dealt with.  No, I don't plan to get Green Lantern: Rebirth.

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, "The quiet stuff's important too, maybe even *more* important. And it's gotta be done and we can be proud of it -- I get it. But I *still* don't put on the suit to do paperwork." - Wally West, JLA #107

Comments

[liabrown]

Geez, hours later after trying many times, I'm finally able to post. Sheesh.

Thanks for the info, Dave! I suspect the Brotherhood will look even dumber after this issue, since I'm guessing Avalanche doesn't flatten and bury the school from his hilltop vantage point, even though he's perfectly capable of doing so.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Yep, that is correct. He doesn't do that. In fact, the "plan" seems to come down to "Everyone start blasting the school, since we've gotten past their psi defenses and they're obviously going to be off guard so we don't need to do anything fancy." Yeah, no point in trying to maximize the effect of your rare opportunity or anything.

[liabrown]

It seems those boys just aren't that bright...moreso than usual. If only Mystique would show up and give Av a good thrashing for being a dope and hanging around with other dopes! Ugh, he's been so badly butchered for years now.