(no subject)

[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 dead, 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

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.

     Outsiders #17: DC - Winick likes to tackle the Real World Issues in his
books, and this time brings in someone from the real world: John Walsh, of
America's Most Wanted.  And it actually makes sense, as the Outsiders face
something that's a little outside of their range of expertise but right up
Walsh's alley.  D'Anda's obvious use of photoreference or even scanning for
Walsh is visually jarring, though.  Recommended.  $2.50/$3.85Cn
     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
     Chronicles of the Universe TPB: Antarctic Press - Most fans who become
pros have their own setting, meticulously developed over the years (if only a
tweak on someone else's setting).  And it's very risky to bring these private
worlds to the public page, because there's SO MUCH STUFF demanding to get out
all at once.  And because the creator has to be VERY careful to not make the
story incomprehensible to a new reader.  I'd put Espinosa's "Universe" around
the middle of the pack here.  The stories are mostly readable, but do suffer
from "Wait, what's that?" syndrome an awful lot.  Dozens of major characters
and millennia of history spanning thousands of galaxies...in around a hundred
pages.  It's a tough fit, and while the opening story is nice and
introductory, the rest really could have stood to follow a few pages of head
shots and summaries a la a Perfect Memory cast section.  Basically, most of
this book is aimed at people who already know the setting, which is a really
small audience (Rod and his RPG buddies, for the most part).  Now, it LOOKS
pretty nice.  Espinosa's still a little uncertain on some of his figure work
in a few of the pieces, but it's a nifty look at how he does Big Splashy
without using computer art.  Interesting for those who like "evolution of
style" stuff.  Mildly recommended otherwise, though.  $16.95/$27.15Cn
     You Can Draw Mecha: Antarctic Press - I've only skimmed it so far, but
check http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/HowToDraw in a few days for
a more complete review.  A lot of time is spent on things like themes and
motifs, assuming that the reader has a basic grounding in figure drawing.
This is a good thing...why reinvent the wheel in every book?  Different
subgenres are covered, like combat mecha, fantasy setting magic-mecha, pulp
mecha, etc.  A good style&ideas book, and the "Faking It" section at the end
is a nice complement to How Not To Draw Manga.  Recommended.  $19.95/$26.95Cn
(huh, weird exchange rate, it's cheaper than Universe)

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!)

     Once again, Diamond didn't ship any Blue Monday: Painted Moon to my
shop.  Still no new Amelia Rules.

Awards:

Best Book: None.

"A Branding Issue" Award to Outsiders #17

"Social Construct" Award to JLA #107

"Tea and Synergy" Award to Planetary #21

"A Cast Of Thousands...And That's Just The Desperado Family" Award to 
     Chronicles of the Universe TPB

"Power X-Treme" Award to You Can Draw Mecha

     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

Left the end quote inside the cut, since it's the same as on the First Looks.