Comics for April 14, 2010

[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.
An archive can be found on my homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 
     The pollen count is OVER NINE THOUSAND!!1!!  My Scouter shattered!

     Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Amelia Rules!
the Tweenage Guide to NOT Being UNpopular

"Other Media" Capsules:

     Things that are comics-related but not necessarily comics (i.e.
comics-based movies like Iron Man or Hulk), or that aren't going to be
available via comic shops (like comic pack-ins with DVDs) will go in this
section when I have any to mention.  They may not be as timely as comic
reviews, especially if I decide to review novels that take me a week or two
(or ten) to get around to.

     Nothing this week.


Time-Shifting:
     Sometimes I get a comic a week or two late because of Diamond's
combination of neglect and incompetence.  If it's more than a week late,
though, I won't review it unless it's very notable.  Additionally, I will
often get tradepaperbacks long after publication or even sometimes before
Diamond ships them, and those will go here.  If I'm reasonably sure I'm
reviewing something that didn't ship this week, this is the section for it.

     Nothing this week.  

New Comics:
     Comics and comic collections that I got this week and were actually
supposed to be out this week, as far as I can tell.  These reviews will
generally be spoiler-free, but the occasional bit will slip in.

     Transformers Nefarious #2: IDW - Well, Dirt Boss gets some good bits, at
least.  The other non-movie toy characters brought in are pretty much
interchangeable spear-carriers (playing up the insectile aspects by giving
Reverb an extra set of arms was a nice touch, though).  Much of the rest of
the story is either narration about how messed up the situation is (from the
POV or Prime or Soundwave) or scenes with the new Big Bad that's messing up
the situation.  It all feels more like we're being TOLD how dire things are
and only barely SHOWN any of it.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99

     Adventure Comics #10: DC - Triangle number 38, more Last Stand of New
Krypton megacrossovercrap.  In fact, there's barely any pretense of a Legion
focus this time...a little bit of Quislet initially, a bit of some other
Legionnaires in the middle, but mostly Superman and Superboy in the main
plot.  The last part with the Kryptonian infiltrator ends as boringly as it
began.  At least it looks like only one more issue of this at most before New
Krypton is over and the book shifts to being a Legion title again.  Mild
recommendation to avoid.  $3.99

     Booster Gold #31: DC - "The END of an era!" proclaims the cover.
Jurgens wraps up the last bits of his run, dealing with the issues between
Booster and his sister and generally giving Booster a reason to not think the
job entirely sucks.  He also tosses in a bit of a retcon before handing
things back to, um, the people whose story he retconned.  Hm.  The Rip Hunter
stuff is spinning off into a new comic, and Booster's going back to Giffen
and DeMatteis, which may or may not become full of fail.  Intentional camp is
hard.  Trying to recapture successful intentional camp is almost impossible.
This issue is a good coda to the run, though.  Recommended.  $2.99

     Secret Six #20: DC - No cover banners, just blood.  Okay, the two plot
threads last issue are apparently tied together, something that wasn't
exactly clear at the time.  This issue also acknowledges the events of Cry
for Justice while also taking a subtle "Hey, we're a book about villains and
even we're not going THERE" dig at it.  Speaking of THEREs, though, the arc
focus is now pretty clearly on Catman approaching and possibly crossing the
line between villain and monster (a line many on the team drove a main battle
tank through ages ago).  Recommended.  $2.99

     The Amazing Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot #3 (of 3): Marvel - A bit of a
delay between issues, eh?  Generally a good issue, playing with some of the
genre conventions and subverting others.  I do think the "nobody has seen
rage like this" sequence was a bit much, though, given that Spider-Man has a
similar scene once every few years on average.  Recommended.  $3.99

     Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #1: Marvel - Solicited as just "Super
Heroes" under the Marvel Adventures subline, but the indicia is "Marvel
Adventures Super Heroes".  Of course, the cover has "Iron Man" bigger than
the actual title, which I'm sure is causing store owners all sorts of hassles
in shelving and deciding whether to pull it for people.  Anyway, despite all
of this, it's really just the next issue of Tobin's rebooted MA Avengers, as
part of the team takes on a hit-it-type threat and another deals with the
whole sanctioning issue.  A good story, plus it involves percussive
degaussing.  The backup has Zabu and some adorable baby Tyrannosaurs.
Meerp.  Recommended.  $3.99

     Iron Man: Legacy #1: Marvel - I stopped reading Fraction's Iron Man a
while back, so I have no idea how consistent this new book by Van Lente is
with where Tony's been dragged lately, but I don't really care so long as
this book is allowed to keep going where it seems to be going.  The opening
premise is, to be honest, overdone.  Repeatedly, and recently.  Someone is
using Iron Man tech to kill people, and Tony has to figure out how to deal
with it.  But while recognizing the consequences of his choices and agonizing
over them for a few pages, in the end Tony invents his way out of the problem
(and into other problems, of course), which is as it should be.  Of course,
he's also being played by a master at the game, but it works quite well so
far.  Kurth's art doesn't always fit the tone, but it's generally good.  The
backup is Yet Another Reprint Of Tales Of Suspense #39.  Maybe they'll
continue to reprint issues that haven't gotten non-TPB reprints lately,
although I'd prefer just bulking out the new material if they want to justify
the $3.99 cover price.  Recommended.

     Amelia Rules! the Tweenage Guide to NOT Being UNpopular: Atheneum -
There's a 5 on the spine, but unlike volumes 1-4 this is new material rather
than a collection of floppies.  It looks like the 6x9 inch format of 150-200
pages will be how Gownley's going to be going with the series from here on
out, a more bookstore-friendly format.  The title of this volume is also the
title of a book-within-the-book, a sort of tweenage realpolitik self-help
book that stomps on the "special snowflake" view of childrearing but
predictably goes too far in the other direction.  "You're not popular, you
never will be popular, but if you keep your expectations really low and don't
make waves you can avoid being UNpopular."  Given the bizarre nature of
Amelia's circle of friends, struggling with the Blandwagoning presented by
this book makes for a lot of conflict and probably more self-awareness than
any 5th grader is likely to experience.  But that's okay.  :)  By turns
thoughtful, insane, touching and hilarious, to say this is "more of the same"
form Gownley is high praise.  Strongly recommended (and almost makes up for
missing two other books this week that would likely be strongly
recommended).  $10.99

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 4/14/10: Official Handbook of the Gold Digger
Universe #22, Gold Digger v3 #105 and #116, Gold Digger Sacred Library #3,
Marvel Boy: the Uranian #3.  Add Atomic Robo and the Revenge of the Vampire
Dimension #2 and Gold Digger: PeeBri's Big Adventure.  Diamond's new reorder
system claims that they are going to ship to my store, but not when or from
which warehouse.  Today's latest try at reordering Uranian #3 at least says
it's shipping from the Memphis warehouse, so I'll probably have it next week. 

Awards:

"Something Tells Me OSHA Wouldn't Approve" Award to Transformers: Nefarious
     #2

"Leave Off The -A-Doop On This One" Award to Adventure Comics #10

"You'd Think Punks With Guns Would Avoid Metropolis" Award to Booster Gold
     #31

"The Curse Of Being Colorful Characters" Award to Secret Six #20

"You'd Think Punks Would Avoid Bars In Manhattan" Award to The Amazing
     Spider-Man Presents: Jackpot #3 (of 3)

"What Kind Of Jackets Do Mithril Traders Wear In The Commodity Pits, 
     Chain Mail?" Award to Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #1

"So, Can I Get Permission To Pervert Your Technology?" Award to Iron Man
     Legacy #1

"Every One Of You Is A Special Snowflake...Until Society Pounds You Into
     Dirty Slush" Award to Amelia Rules! the Tweenage Guide to NOT Being
     UNpopular

   Dave Van Domelen, "Ha! Tell me I didn't just destroy all Western thought since 1965!" - Amelia McBride