Late Comics Shipment Capsules

[dvandom]

                    Dave's Unspoilt Capsules and Awards
                          Late Shipment Special

Standard Disclaimers: Please set appropriate followups.  Recommendation does
not factor in price.  Not all books will have arrived in your area this week.
Lots of network outages today here.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

     Here's a bunch of books that Diamond didn't bother shipping the first
time around, and required repeated shaking to cut loose.  Organized by page
size.  :)

     Transformers: Aspects of Evil: Titan Books - This is the first TPB
collecting the black and white new material made for the UK Transformers
comic after budget cuts ended the color version.  About 80 pages long, Titan
decided to go with a cheaper format themselves, a digest (7.5" tall, 5" wide)
about 80 pages long, with no new material (the previous full-sized
collections had timeline articles and cover galleries).  Most of the stories
in this volume have to do with a single theme, if not quite a plotline.  And
that theme is the corruption of the Matrix, and of its holder.  It's somewhat
fractured, although I'm not sure if it's because there were missing parts
period, or that they decided to leave one of the key arcs to a later TPB
because it wouldn't all fit in the pagecount.  There's also a couple of
standalones involving monsters.  The art is okay, but typically uneven for a
UK TF series.  Mildly recommended.  $7.95/#4.99Cn
     Peebomanga 1.0: Antarctic Press - Wheeeee!  An all-original book that
looks like a collection of strips, and which presages a promised
(threatened?) Peebomanga webcomic.  Now, I have a soft spot in my head for
the Peebos (I even tried building my own, with unimpressive results), so of
course I was predisposed to like this...although it also meant I had high
expectations too.  Which were met, and more.  You must buy this, presuming
Diamond will ship it to you.  Strongly recommended.  $9.99
     Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Adventures v1: SLG/Amaze Ink - Collects the
"Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey" adaptation and the first four issues of the
(sadly, not long-) continuing series in grayscale.  "Extras" are limited to a
few introduction bits, cover gallery and creator bios, but if you're not one
of the lucky people who bought the series in the first place (aside the
fill-in #8, that one wasn't so good, I wouldn't be surprised if it's left out
of the collections), snap this up.  Strongly recommended.  $13.95
     Essential Luke Cage, Power Man v1: Marvel - The longest-delayed of the
books on this list, and also just plain the longest.  Twenty-seven B&W
reproductions for seventeen bucks, good deal.  It's also an interesting study
in how a concept can evolve over a few years and a half dozen creators or so.
It started as blaxploitation actioner homage with a superhero veneer: Cage
had some not-so-flashy powers, there were occasional references to Marvel
standards like Tony Stark or the Avengers, but Luke Cage was largely in his
own world despite being on the same planet as them.  No one else really had
powers to speak of, it was all gadgets and gimmicks and trickery except for
Cage.  Then it transitions, taking the standard actioner trope of
"Hard-bitten detective is stiffed by a powerful client, and won't stop until
he gets his relatively paltry pay," and making the powerful client be...
Doctor Doom.  Pretty clean break into the mainstream Marvel universe, there.
From that point, it becomes more of a superhero book with a blaxploitation
veneer, as almost every enemy is a super-villain.  True, it's still gizmos
and gadgets, but of a more potent variety.  By #27, he's gotten pretty well
tied into the MU.  The writing is...well, it's mid 70s Marvel writing.  Kinda
overwrought a lot of the time, but doesn't take itself TOO seriously.  And I
like the old informative captions.  The B&W treatment is generally okay,
since the narrative captions and dialogue give plenty of color cues, but once
in a while it's hard to tell whose fist is sticking out of the explosion.
Recommended.  $16.99/$27.25Cn
     How To Draw Chibi: Antarctic Press - First, the good stuff.  By having
several artists with distinctively different chibi styles contributing to
this book (mostly it's Dunn, but Hutchison, Wight and Kantz put in a fair
amount too), you get a sort of triangulation effect.  Where the book spends
most of its time, on figure drawing and expressions, it does a good job.  The
vehicles and props section is a bit brief, though.  And on to the not so good
stuff, the introductory generic "artist's tools and techniques" section felt
like wasted space.  True, every How To Draw book could possibly be someone's
first, but it's probably not.  And there's other stuff out there, including
stuff by Antarctic, that does a better job on that.  Also, the ending "How to
break into comics" section does have some good tips, but felt out of place.
Especially since drawing chibi itself is kinda niche for breaking into
comics...as the book itself says, it's generally something you do to
emphasize emotion, not for an entire book.  I'd have liked to see more on
chibi props and critters instead of the opening and closing chapters.  Mildly
recommended.  $19.95/$26.95Cn

Awards:

Best Book: Peebomanga v1.0

"Must Be Something He Ate" Award to Transformers: Aspects of Evil TPB

"TUNACRON!" Award to Peebomanga v1.0

"Check My Utter Panic!" Award to Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Adventures v1

"Trying To Hire Luke Cage Is Nearly Almost Fatal" Award to Essential Luke
     Cage, Power Man v1

"The Cuteness, It Haunts Me" Award to How To Draw Chibi

   Dave Van Domelen, "RUN, GINA! RUN! IRONY IS COMING FOR YOU!!!" - Peegi, Peebomanga v1.0.