Capsules for March 2

[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.
Arrr, Pirates of the Crimson Coast!  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. 

     Superman: Strength #3 (of 3): DC - And so it ends.  And wow, the art is
even worse than before.  The story is okay, but not good enough for me to
really recommend this book.  In fact, I dropped it with this issue.
$5.99/$8.00Cn 

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.

     Marvel Team-Up #6: Marvel - Cap and Black Widow are the featured players
this time.  Kirkman takes the opportunity to wrap up some of his plot threads
from the previous Cap book.  Looks like this arc is wrapped up, although
there's several intentional danglers of consequence.  Recommended.
$2.25/$3.25Cn
     eXiles #60: Marvel - Ahhhh, Age of Pocky.  Of which I know almost
nothing, so this issue doesn't really resonate with me.  Mildly recommended.
$2.99/$4.25Cn
     Captain America and the Falcon #13: Marvel - A two part arc wraps up the
series.  Big psychological turning point story, a pity there's only one more
issue.  Jurgens does a good job on the art.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Rising Stars #24 (of 24): Image/Top Cow - Like last issue, this is more
of a summary of a story than an actual story.  Told in montage, with lots of
narration and almost no dialogue, it's clearly the sort of thing appropriate
for the final minutes of a movie or TV show, but gives the impression that
it'd be really nice if someone actually wrote a comic about this.  Mildly
recommended.  $3.99/$4.81Cn
     Fallen Angel #19: DC/Abandoned in a corner - I'd like to say I like the
George Perez cover, but it looks too much like a mockup, like some leftover
Sachs & Violens art was photoshopped into a quickly sketched framing piece.
The interior, however, is a bit better integrated.  I'll be sorry to see this
book go, it looks like the reprieve from cancellation it got after #18 was
unreprieved, and #20 will be it.  Anyway, everything you really need to know
about the guest stars is presented in this issue, and I'd call this a
promising new start to the title if it hadn't been subjected to cribdeath.
Recommended.  $2.99/$4.00Cn
     Gold Digger v3 #61: Antarctic - Running fight scene followed by
monologuing.  The fight scene is at the bad end of incoherent, but the
monologuing is okay.  The cover kinda gives away the last page.  I'd like to
say this arc will probably read better all at once, but it doesn't look like
that's going to be the case.  Mildly recommended.  $2.99/$4.05Cn
     Akiko and the Training Master: Delacorte Press - Took me two weeks to
get this, because it never got ordered by the one bookstore in town that
actually stocks Akiko (turns out they still have it listed under "Akiko and
the Zarga Baffa Gang", which must have been a preliminary title, and they
never updated to the new ISBN).  Anyway, this is the first Akiko book of
"Season Two", in which Akiko has entered 5th grade and gotten her growth
spurt.  The change in appearance was at the request of the publishers, who
apparently wanted to cash in on things like Kim Possible (I wonder how far
Prince Froptoppit's jaw will drop next time he sees Akiko?).  Anyway, as
befits the move into a new look and new year, Akiko spends this story with,
well, the Training Master.  And like your standard Hong Kong actioner
training sequence, it was all about the abuse and perseverance.  Crilley
avoided some obvious cliches and played on others, and I must admit I can't
recall any other story where the dramatic turning point involved the making
of a sandwich.  Recommended.  $9.95/$13.95Cn  (Side note: the book store I
ended up ordering it through put one of those crinkly plastic dust cover
protectors on it, both redundant and kinda clumsy.  Do they expect their
customers to drool on their books?  Don't answer that.)

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!)

     Current list as of 2/23:

     Savage Henry Puppet Trap, Savage Henry Powerchords #2, Flare #2, Bill
and Ted's Excellent Adventures v1 TPB, Livewires #1 and Essential Luke Cage
v1.  Add Love as a Foreign Language v2.

Awards:

Best Book: None again.  Sorry.  Seem to be having a dry spell on stuff that
     really enthuses or amuses me.

"The Peter Parker Principle" Award to Marvel Team-Up #6

"Age Of Dropping X-Books" Award to eXiles #60

"American History A" Award to Captain America and the Falcon #13

"The World Is Bouncy" Award to Rising Stars #24 (of 24)

"I REALLY Do Not Want To Know What The Claw Hammer Is Doing On That Wall
     Display" Award to Fallen Angel #19

"Dragonball GD" Award to Gold Digger v3 #61

"Can She Punch Her Way Out Of A Coffin Now?" Award to Akiko and the Training
     Master 

   Dave Van Domelen, "You so-called plan is going to kill us all!" "Nope. It's gonna NEARLY kill us all. That's the sign of a real good plan!" - Beeba and Spuckler, Akiko and the Training Master

Comments

Re: Ult. Iron Man

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

I don't care for the Ultimate version of Iron Man, and am actively disinterested in Card. Especially since Iron Man is, when done properly, a book involving political intrigue, and Card's recent political rantings are...very much not to my tastes.

Re: Ult. Iron Man

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

An' I thoush it wash about *hik* martinish an opa-oper-driving powered balishtic armor un'er th'inebriashin.