Comics for November 17

[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.
Rather big comics week for me....  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 give it a recommendation, I'm probably not
buying it. 

     X-Force #4: Marvel - Still pretty much an excuse for Liefeld to draw the
characters he created.  This issue has people mostly standing around and
talking or fighting at intervals without too much sense in the transitions.
At least I didn't see any howlingly bad art this time, and Nicieza gets in a
good zinger from one character.  No, I am not buying this.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Pulse #6: Marvel - I dropped this to avoid the crossover stuff, and it
looks like I was correct in my judgement.  Oh, you can follow what goes on
without reading Secret War (something I have not done myself), but the heart
isn't there.  Characters act abnormally for reasons one presumes have to do
with Secret War, but it's not really explained here.  And, shockingly, Brent
Anderson turns in art that I don't consider to be very good.  The coloring
hurts it a lot, mind you.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Captain America v5 #1: Marvel - No volume number is listed in the comic,
but Midtown's list says v5, so I'll go with that.  The art is dark and murky
on purpose, setting a dark and murky mood.  While I liked some of the
character bits Brubaker puts in, and the plot looks to be suitably cosmic in
nature, the issue-ending shocker put me WAY off this book.  I hadn't
pre-ordered this title, and I'm not going to be putting it on my pull (unless
it turns around and I read First Looks that show this).  $2.99/$4.25Cn

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.

     Transformers Energon #29: Dreamwave - Well, the massive plot-thread
splitting of the previous few issues collapses down to something more
manageable this issue as things come to a head.  I'm amused that a certain
character seems to be going down the Dark Phoenix path.  Milne's art is a bit
hard to follow in places where it doesn't need to be hard to follow, but it's
better than, say, Ruffolo.  Yes, yes...damning with faint praise and all
that, but still.  Generally a good issue.  Recommended.  $2.95
     Hardy Boys #1: Papercutz - Quick summation: Shoujo Hardy Boys updated
for the current day.  Of course, the shoujo elements come mainly from Lea
Hernandez's art, but think about it...the Hardy Boys already fulfill a lot of
the tropes of shoujo already.  :)  Lobdell's writing gets a bit stiff and
campy at times, although not enough to keep me from buying this issue (I read
it for free online a few weeks ago).  Damn...just had a Small World moment.
I was looking up the name of the colorist to comment on the deliberately flat
colors used and how they help with the mood.  And since there's almost
definitely NOT two Lovern Kindzierskis out there, I went to high school with
the colorist.  Heh.  Anyway, personal moment aside, the odd blend of 50s
dialogue "feel" and decidedly modern setting takes a little getting used to,
but it gives the book a clear hook.  Recommended.  $2.95/$3.95Cn
     JSA Strange Adventures #4 (of 6): DC - The two plot streams of this
series finally merge all the way.  This is good, because the other main plot
event of the issue was not only spoilered by the cover, but also telegraphed
several pages before it happened.  Generally a good read.  Recommended.
$3.50/$5.25Cn 
     Teen Titans #18: DC - Johns does a pretty good job of dealing with a
complex plot and setting without giving in to the temptation to stretch this
out to 12 issues so he can go into all the details.  Combined with McKone's
art, he manages to suggest a lot of stuff so it doesn't have to be spelled
out.  And while the 'dark future' trope is inherently kinda tiresome at this
point, Johns holds my interest.  Recommended.  $2.50/$3.85Cn
     JLA #108: DC - Heh.  There was a complaint about #107 that is answered
here in spades and in irony, I like.  It's a pretty good issue overall, and
sets up the characters involved well enough that those of us who have never
read their previous appearances aren't left out.  Recommended.  $2.25/$3.50Cn 
     Space Ghost #1 (of 5): DC - While a lot more graphic than anything you'd
have seen in the original Space Ghost cartoon, this really does feel like it
could have been the origin of the "real" Space Ghost.  A definite Lone Ranger
in Space feel without being a total cut and paste of the Lone Ranger.  Joe
Kelly's got my interest.  Recommended.  $2.95/$4.50Cn
     Earth's Mightiest Heroes #2 (of 8): Marvel - This issue is set after
Avengers #4 (original series), and while the whole security clearance subplot
runs through it, the main focus is on Captain America trying to fit in to a
new time.  And deal with reality television.  Yeah, it's an update, moving
all the origins stuff up in time to 'fairly recently'.  Oddly, not everyone
gets moved up.  A good read with some interesting looks at the sorts of
things that were glossed over or not really addressed until a few years
later.  Recommended.  $3.50/$5.00Cn
     Spider-Man India #1: Marvel - I picked this up from the First Looks pile
for the same reason I grabbed X-Force...expecting a train wreck.  However,
aside from the name mapping being a little too cute, this was a pretty good
comic.  The core of the Spider-Man story is transferred pretty well to the
Mumbai (formerly Bombay) streets.  One nitpick, though...I'm a bit spotty on
karma vs dharma, but when the new Spider-Man is told he's fulfilling his
karma, shouldn't that be dharma (duty)?  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Madrox #3 (of 5): Marvel - Peter David is having too much fun with the
idea of Mutie-town, the relatively recent Marvel invention of a sort of
mutant Chinatown in NYC.  The Big Reveal of this issue isn't too surprising,
but that's mostly because PAD foreshadows a fair amount.  I do have to wonder
if the plots are all going to dovetail, though, or if Rahne and Guido are off
on a separate thread that's just there to give them something to do and allow
cutaways from the main plot.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Fantastic Four #520: Marvel - Whoa.  A lot of good scenes, some
excellent "a mile in your shoes" scenes, and an extra freaky Page 20
Shocker.  Strongly recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     She-Hulk #9: Marvel - Pelletier is back on the art, and Slott is back on
the top of his game.  Strongly recommended.  Nuff said.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Conan #10: Dark Horse - Conan sulks a lot.  This is one of the stories
I've read in the Marvel reprints, so a lot of my experience this time
involved mentally comparing how Busiek was stretching it out to allow more
expression and body language in the "slow" part of the story.  Nord does a
good job of taking advantage of this opportunity for the most part, although
there were a couple places where I'd have liked a little more visual
difference among the goon squad.  Recommended.  $2.99
     Quagmire U.S.A. #5: Antarctic Press - There's plot advancement, lots of
continuity references [And footnotes! - Ed.], some good gags...but what
really stands out is that someone gets beaten senseless by enormous Ben Dunn
drawn breasts.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.05Cn
     NHS #121: Antarctic Press - Oh so very much a relationship issue.  While
there's a couple short scenes not about the various pairings in this book,
romance scenes utterly dominate the issue and put it in a chokehold.  I
wonder if Bair is deliberately playing around with styles, because the art is
much sparer and dreamlike than her normal work on this book.  Recommended.
$2.99/$4.05 
     Gold Digger v3 #57: Antarctic Press - A running fight scene leavened by
a little "my fiendish plot" exposition and a short "tiny bit of backstory"
flashback.  Fun fluff for the most part, which is why Perry has stretched
this arc an extra issue.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.05Cn  (Oh, and there's an ad
on the back for Gold Digger Adventures, Gina and Britt as teenagers...fear!) 
     Bosom Enemies #4: A Fine Line - I read the first half of this issue on
ModernTales.com, the rest either hasn't gone up yet, or it went up in a burst
and the site's dodgy archive system has kept me from finding it (for some
reason, it's the most dodgy on Barr's stuff).  Not that reading it all online
would have kept me from buying the 64 page hardcopy, to go with the other
three.  :)  Anyway, the point at which the online version left off for me is
just before things get weird.  And since this is a story about WWII soldiers
who find themselves in another world turned into pseudo-horses and then
popping up in 1970 San Francisco as humans again but unable to remove any of
their gear or clothing...saying "things get weird" is probably a massive
understatement.  The idea of seeing things from another perspective has been
a (if not THE) major theme of this story, and it kicks into high gear in the
final 32 pages.  And in the end, it works well.  All the detours and sidebars
and flashbacks didn't derail things at all.  (Warning: some male nudity.)
Recommended.  $9.95/$13.77Cn/E8.29 (Euros)

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.
     Flare #2 didn't show up this week.

Awards:

Best Book: Tie between She-Hulk #9 and Fantastic Four #520

"I AM POWER INCARNATE!" Award to Transformers Energon #29

"It's Not Paranoia If You're The Hardy Boys" Award to Hardy Boys #1

"Writing Up A Storm" Award to JSA Strange Adventures #4 (of 6)

"Psycho Girlfriend" Award to Teen Titans #18

"It's Dull To Be The King" Award to JLA #108

"Staring Too Long Into The Abyss" Award to Space Ghost #1 (of 5)

"Maybe Cable TV Was A Bad Idea" Award to Earth's Mightiest Heroes #2 (of 8)

"Doesn't Sleeping With Earrings On Get Uncomfortable?" Award to Spider-Man
     India #1

"Bishop Takes Rook" Award to Madrox #3 (of 5)

"Dude, Power Cosmic" Award to Fantastic Four #520

"Hang Time" Award to She-Hulk #9

"CSI: Nemedia" Award to Conan #10

"What A Way To Go" Award to Quagmire U.S.A. #5

"No Mere Man" Award to NHS #120

"An Old Crush" Award to Gold Digger v3 #57

"Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage" Award to Bosom Enemies #4

   Dave Van Domelen, "I swear, once I caught him practicin' it in the mirror!" - Ben Grimm