Comics for June 8, First Looks June 15

[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.
Of COURSE campus air conditioning broke.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

     http://www.dvandom.com/breakdown is my new webcomic, whee!

First Looks:
     Every so often, I'll have the time (either while waiting for comics to
be sorted on Wednesday, or over the weekend) to pull out my PDA 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.
     If I read the First Looks on Wednesday, I won't include them in the next
week's review.  But if I don't get around to them until the weekend, I'll
include them in the next regular post.

June 15:

     JLA Classified #8: DC - A big load of amusingly used cliches and
evidence that the creative team needs to date more, or something.
$2.99/$4.00Cn
     Stormbringer #6 (of 6): Marvel - Wow.  Some of the most painfully (and
apparently intentionally) bad faux-'street' dialogue I've evere had the
misfortune to read, on top of rather purple captions.  And just to make
things better, this is apparently an anti-climax rather than an over-long
denounment.  Very glad I dropped this.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Hercules #3 (of 5): Marvel - First issue showed a lot of promise, second
issue wasted it.  And now?  While it does seem to be turning a corner, it's
still pretty bad most of the time.  Even after that corner.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Power Pack #4 (of 4): Marvel - Meh.  Rather weak ending to a series that
doesn't really fit anywhere (set when the kids were still little, but also
set now, sorta).  Something of a wash.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     GLA #3 (of 4): Marvel - Ahhhh, delightfully tacky.  And the Serious Plot
is revealed, to boot.  Recommended.  $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.

     Green Arrow #51: DC - Peaty (writer) and Battle (art) take over for a
bit.  Decent one-shot story, if a bit purple at times.  Recommended.
$2.50/$3.50Cn 
     JLA #115: DC - Johns and co-writer Heinberg take over for more Big Event
fallout.  Identity Crisis in this case.  Sadly, this is pretty much by the
numbers angst and villains being nasty.  Competent, but no more.  Mildly
recommended.  $2.50/$3.50Cn
     Tom Strong #33: DC/ABC - A decent story, drawing on several SF classics
(by which I mean 'ripping off' but in a nice way).  Recommended.
$2.99/$4.00Cn
     New Thunderbolts #9: Marvel - The use of Radioactive Man as the main
viewpoint gives the script some interesting flavor.  The side plots are also
good, and it's nice to see naming issues resolved the way they are here.
Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     Gravity #1 (of 5): Marvel - Slow week, decided to give this a shot.
Decent new hero on the block story, feels well tied-in to the setting.
Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn

     (I dropped Ultimate Fantastic Four.  Don't care about the new writer,
actively dislike the artist.)     

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 6/2:

     Savage Henry Puppet Trap, Savage Henry Powerchords #2, Flare #2 and #0,
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures v1 TPB, Essential Luke Cage v1,
Transformers: Aspects of Evil TPB.  Add Peebomanga and How To Draw Chibi,
Diamond apparently decided our store didn't need any Antarctic books this
week. 

Awards:

Best Book: None.  I suspect it would have been Peebomanga if I actually GOT
     it.  

"What's In A Name?" Award to Green Arrow #51

"IC Reception" Award to JLA #115

"Existential Gap" Award to Tom Strong #33

"It's The Count That Thoughts" Award to New Thunderbolts #9

"Frosh Orientation?  Whazzat?" Award to Gravity #1 (of 5)

   Dave Van Domelen, "Usually, I recommend that incoming freshmen GET DOWN--" - Student advisor, Gravity #1. Wise advice in NYC.

Comments

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

Scary thought of the day: I strongly considered buying the new "New Warriors" title. I miss those guys. I especially miss those guys with a decent writer. Especially Speedball...

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Sadly, it's a bad concept and a horrible artist.

[megaspork.livejournal.com]

I disagree Dvandom. I picked it up, and being a hard core New Warriors fan found it to be fitting the characters, as speedball put it to Namorita after she mentioned she was afraid of being laughed at... "Rita, you're on a team with me. Speedball." It does take a serious take on the fact they're stuck in character wise in a bad concept itself through Dwayne's little idea.

They're serious, but in a different way then most heroes man. Everytime everyone tries to make them seriou in the way normal heroes are, the book gets cancelled. Doesn't that say something?

Lurker> Dude, Speedball is written perfectly in this book. He's his own silly self, not taking himself seriously, but not being a goofus either. The only real complaint I can find about this book is it doesn't have one more team member, and maybe the fact Microbe comes off as a little bit too much comedy relief. But it's in a good way, poor guy's powers suck, but he manages to use them to help take down the Armidillo and Tiger Shark. *chuckles*

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

I think dvandom meant the concept of the super-hero reality show. Which if so, I agree with. It not only doesn't seem to fit but its been done. What was the book, Wildgard?

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

X-Force/X-tatix

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Wildguard is the "American Idol" style reality show one, yeah. New Warriors is more of a "Road Rules".

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

Yeah I really like this ish of T-bolts.
Looking forward to GLA next week.


And GOD...I need to stop buying X-titles. FOXX‽ Comon.
Ult. Spidey was really good this week. I know Bendis is not everyone's thing, but I thought this ish was a good read (aside from the 5 panels of Bendis orally pleasuring the corpse of Will Eisner).