Comics for November 3 (late)

[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.
Not too happy about the elections.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

     Comics came Thursday, so I spent Wednesday reading some of the Marvel
First looks, hence the two sections.

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 give it a recommendation, I'm probably not
buying it. 

November 3 Comics - 

     Avengers #503: Marvel - Ehn.  VERY talky, lots of "how could you be so
stupid as to believe everything else that has been written about that
character in the past?" stuff.  Some amusing moments, but too much "prime
time TV with costumes thrown on" for my tastes.  $3.50/$5.00Cn
     Justice League Unlimited #3: DC - Three so-so tales for the price of
one, as they add two backups.  The main story is okay, the second has a few
good moments, but the last one is a drag, both in writing and art.  Also, it
doesn't seem like the third story even fits the setting...it's just a weak
story drawn cartoony to stick in.  $2.95/$4.50Cn
     Astonishing X-Men #6: Marvel - Most of the scenes are good, with some
great dialogue in them.  However, I kept checking to make sure pages weren't
stuck together, the transitions between scenes were so incredibly bad.  As
with New X-Men, if I didn't have to worry about all the X-continuity stuff, I
might pick this up despite the bad transitioning.  $2.99/$4.25Cn

November 10 Comics - 

     Avengers Finale: Marvel - Bendis writes, about a dozen people draw (most
of the revolving art is in a set of splash pages showing reminiscences), the
main art is murky and dark.  The writing is on the maudlin side, even for the
purposes, and it's standard Bendis dialogue.  It's set three months after
Avengers #503, a fact that will probably have to be ignored by every book AD
impacted.  Ending with a whimper.  $3.50/$5.00Cn
     Iron Man #1 (no volume number): Marvel - Warren Ellis and Adi Granov.
The previews worried me enough that I did not pre-order this book.  I find
Granov's art to be wooden, and the scenes we got had very slow pacing.
However, while the pacing is still pretty slow, there's some scenes of
emotional intensity that made the overall story flow much more satisfyingly.
The fault/responsibility balance is better than I've come to expect from
Ellis of late.  On the down side, the retcon train is rolling again, once
again updating Iron Man's origin and contradicting the last retelling and its
fallout.  The art is still a little stiff, although Granov has a decent
layout sensibility, switching between widescreen panels for more cinematic
moments and nine panel grid for the close up war of words.  As an aside, it
looks like Granov is a PC user, but letterer Randy Gentile is a Mac user.  I
say this because on unnumbered page 8, a character is using a beige box PC,
but the captions of what he's typing use the OSX-style red/yellow/green
corner buttons for window control.  :)  Provisionally recommended.
$3.50/$5.00Cn 
     New Thunderbolts #1: Marvel - Nicieza and Grummett.  It's a good
restart, and it keeps to the various themes important to the Thunderbolts:
redemption, family squabbles, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons (or
vice versa) and Dark Secrets.  I *totally* feel where Josten is coming from,
by the way.  Been there.  Didn't do exactly what he did, but that might be
difficult.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Spider-Man & Wolverine: MTU #1: Marvel - Kirkman and Kolins.  The Kolins
art was okay.  The Kirkman writing was comedy gold.  The first page was
TERRIFIC, and he continued to bring the funny almost all issue (one might
argue the last page wasn't supposed to be funny).  I was a little thrown by
Wolverine having adamantium back, clearly I missed the memo (but I did go
check the X-shelf to make sure Wolvie did have the metal back).  Strongly
recommended.  $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.

     Rising Stars #22 (of 24): Image - The contractual snarls finally got
hashed out, and Brent Anderson is drawing this first new issue of Rising
Stars in some time.  The issue is very narrative.  Most of the pages
summarize the events of years or even decades, with only a few scenes of
actual "things happening realtime".  For all that, though, it's pretty
compelling summary.  And they did include a guide to #1-21 on the first two
pages, for those who may have forgotten.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.60Cn
     Firebirds: Image - A one-shot by Jay Faerber with art by Andres Ponce.
The initial concept of "daughter of a superheroine discovers her legacy,
mother and daughter team up" reminded me of Go-Girl, and Faerber usually does
okay by me when characterization is more important than plot, so I decided to
give it a try.  Before going into the story, I want to point out the panel
where the daughter suits up for the first time.  There's a blue and yellow
volleyball near her feet...and the colors are balanced so that it evokes the
Legion of Super-Heroes L-on-blue-circle emblem.  If this wasn't intentional
on SOMEONE'S part, it's certainly an amusing coincidence.  Heh.  While the
personality of the mother initially struck me as beign WAY too young, a later
scene does establish that her entire circle of friends is, well, young for
their age.  As old as I am, but still managing to deny that they're not in
college anymore.  That sort of thing.  Still moderately irksome.  That, and
the fact that I can't get "I'm In Love With Stacy's Mom" out of my head.  :)
Overall, though, a good solid done-in-one story with just enough
worldbuilding to keep it from feeling flat.  Recommended.  $5.95
     Transformers vs GIJoe v2 #1 (of 6): Dreamwave - Sort of a sequel to the
World War II crossover, but with enough details...off...to suggest an
alternate timeline.  Or just careless writing, which is certaintly possible.
Pat Lee's art is passable, and McDonough's writing goes okay (although the
military jargon feels pasted-on).  It looks like it might be better than the
first series, but that's not too hard.  Mildly recommended.  $2.95  (Related
note: there's ads in some DC books for Transformers: Armada's first 26
episodes as a box set.)
     Fallen Angel #17: DC - Interestingly, the big flashy conflict of the
issue is shown at a remove, narrated over snippets, while the simple,
non-flashy conflict is close-up and real-time with no narration at all.
Recommended.  $2.95/$4.50Cn
     Alpha Flight v3 #9: Marvel - Huh, issue opens with an appearance by a
group I think was last (and first) seen in v1's "world tour" sequence over a
decade ago realtime.  If my memory serves, of course.  Anyway, Lobdell gets
serious (or, well, less goofy) here, taking on the sort of plot that normally
causes lots of headaches all around, especially for Elayne Riggs.  It's
really hard to say whether this sort of thing is going to work from just the
first part, so I'm going to be cautious and just mildly recommend this for
now.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Earth's Mightiest Heroes #1 (of 6): Marvel - Casey and Kolins present a
sort of "Avengers Year One" story, but can't call it that because DC might
get snippy about trademarks.  It does a good job of not *changing* the old
stories, instead covering the sorts of things that happened between panels in
the faster storytelling style of the day.  Things that "just happened" in the
old stories are delved into here...more of the reasons why and why not, and
the how as well.  But there's still action and conflict.  A very good
balance, and no radical changes for their own sake to the old stories.
Recommended.  $3.50/$5.00Cn
     eXiles #54: Marvel - The title of the issue is "Rube Goldberg", and
that's very apt.  And Bedard has sown enough uncertainty in his previous
issues that the outcome is completely up in the air, so you have to go along
for the ride.  Nice to have a story where predicting the outome is hard to
do.  :)  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Captain America and the Falcon #9: Marvel - I like how Priest is playing
the timecodes to make it not *quite* certain if there's a lot of copies of
the plot device wandering around being creepy, or just one of them being
EXTRA creepy.  (Side note: the first use of "yo soy" in this comic should
probably be "estoy", although admit my Spanish is a decade or so rusty.)  Fun
mystery/action mix, and the Avengers Disassembled parts are *partly*
extricated, leaving some of the stuff that coulda been AD still up in the
air.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Ultimate Fantastic Four #12: Marvel - A good resolution, with just
enough cliffhanger-style "dramatic editing" to justify how things turn out,
but not so much it's lame deus ex machina.  The Ultimate Doom still lacks the
grandeur of the original, and may never attain it, but he's a good foe for
this team.  Recommended.  $2.25/$3.25Cn 
     Arsenic Lullaby #16: AAA Milwaukee Publishing - A good comic cover gives
you an idea of what to expect inside, without giving away the whole store.
This is a good cover.  An anthropomorphic donut, apparently dead, atop a pile
of Holocaust victims.  Yes, you really get a feel for what to expect from
this comic.  :)  There's also some deep, if twisted, philosophical points
considered in the two longer pieces this issue.  Recommended.  $2.65/$3.65Cn 
     The DC Comics Encyclopedia: DK Publishing - The subtitle is "The
definitive guide to the characters of the DC Universe."  Ehhhh, hard to agree
with that claim given the way this book is put together.  Any time you have a
character who has been relaunched due to Crisis/ZeroHour/etc, you might get
an entry on the original, might get one on the reboot, might get some
fusion.  The Legion of Super-Heroes is hit particularly badly by this...if
you believed this book, the Legion only had a half dozen or so members prior
to 1994.  Granted, this is a huge book (easily equivalent to 12-16 issues of
Who's Who, if not more), but it's as if there was no editorial decision on
how to deal with multiple continuities at the front end, and no actual
editing of the submissions to make sure they were consistent.  Maybe I pick
nits, but a reference document should have a consistent style of, well,
referencing things.  Probably the worst case is Mordru, who's not even listed
under his name (he's the Dark Lord instead) and supposedly first appeared in
JSA Secret Files in 1999.  Suuuuurrrrre.  A lesser problem is one of timing.
Some entries are a few months behind the time, while a few others are *ahead*
of the time, giving spoilers on comics that haven't come out yet.  Anyway,
it's a nice big coffee table book, and it does contain useful information,
but it's not definitive.  Thank goodness it has a thorough index, so you can
find characters not listed under their original names.  I can't really ignore
the price on this recommendation, since it's quite expensive.  If you're
interested in the idea of this, and can spare the money, it's probably
worthwhile.  But don't make any sacrifices to pick this up.  $40/$50Cn

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!)

     Savage Henry Puppet Trap didn't show up, but I'm not sure I even ordered
it.  Same deal on Gold Digger Perfect Memory #4 and the Little Endless
Storybook.  Still waiting on Blue Monday and Amelia Rules.

Awards:

Best Book: A lot of good, nothing that knocked my socks off (not counting
     MTU #1, which isn't out until next week).

"National Secrets Act" Award to Rising Stars #22 (of 24)

"One Hot Mama" Award to Firebirds, because I need to get these lame puns
     out of my system once in a while

"One Mot Hama?" Award to Transformers vs GIJoe v2 #1 (of 6)

"Cruel to Kind" Award to Fallen Angel #17

"Causality's A Bitch" Award to Alpha Flight v3 #9

"Contractually Intractable" Award to Earth's Mightiest Heroes #1 (of 6)

"Mayyyybe Something Good, Mayyyybe Something Bad" Award to eXiles #54

"What About Computing?" Award to Captain America and the Falcon #9

"Them Danish Tank Corps Is Fast Off The Mark" Award to Ultimate Fantastic
     Four #12

"Mmmm, Cinnamon" Award to Arsenic Lullaby #16

   Dave Van Domelen, "Love me them moral codes." - Falcon