Comics for June 9, 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 
  Real periodicals distributors actually ship what they list as shipping.

     Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Hawkeye &
Mockingbird #1 (for exceeding expectations by quite a bit)

"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.

     The Transformers #8: IDW - This would be more accurately titled
Spotlight Spike...the lone Transformer to even appear in this issue doesn't
come on-panel in the story until page 16 (okay, another Transformer shows up
in flashback for one panel a few pages later).  Now, if Javier Saltares's
humans weren't so ugly (and obviously influenced by McFarlane on many pages)
this would be less of an issue.  Of course, Costa resorting to the cliche
"show character A is a badass by killing character B" plot doesn't really
help.  Yes, I can see what Costa's storytelling goal was.  But I think he
undercuts the setting more than he had to...he swings the pendulum way too
far back the other way.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99

     Secret Six #22: DC - The dual themes of this arc, borne out most
strongly in its completion, are "the pain of losing family" and "the limits
of power", especially on how the latter impacts on the former.  Not just the
main plot with Catman's son (BTW I like how Simone resolved that), but also
the side plot with Black Alice.  Recommended.  $2.99

     Booster Gold #33: DC - This sort of crosses over with Justice League
Generation Lost, but there's sufficient exposition and flashbacks that I'm
not punished for not reading that.  Anyway, in one way the "age of MWAHAHA"
does return here, but only in the most literal sense...time travel.  The tone
is still rather more serious and grown-up (in the "mature adult" sense rather
than the "mature content" sense) as Booster works on his own to try to solve
the mystery of Maxwell Lord's heel turn.  Y'see, while the facile
explanations and retcons that made him a villain made some sense at the time,
there's just too many stories where both characters and readers got inside
Max's head that contradict the Official Story.  So, Booster's trying to
figure out how that could have happened, and given that the schtick of his
current career is "someone's been messing with history" in-story, dealing
with editorial futzing out-of-story fits too.  :)  Recommended.  $2.99

     Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1 (of 6): DC/ABC - Written by Peter
Hogan, but drawn by Sprouse so at least it's somewhat "classic".  :)  A few
years back, when Promethea ended, it could be considered to have put a bit of
a coda on the ABC Universe.  A happy-enough ending...if not Singularity, a
reasonable facsimile.  But in serial fiction, endings rarely stay ended if
there's interest in seeing more adventures of the characters.  Sure, you can
also go back and tell untold tales...sometimes it seems like half the Tom
Strong stories were set in the past.  But Hogan moves forward, has the Shazam
analogue character mourn the ending of a too-brief utopian age, and then
jumps into the new dramatic conflict.  For the most part it's well done,
although there's a few minor missteps (including an art reference that
Sprouse should have made clearer...a poster changed, but you barely see it
before the change so it's not the clue it should have been).  Still, a
promising start.  Recommended.  $3.99

     Avengers Academy #1: Marvel - Heroic Age banner.  This is essentially
Avengers the Initiative retitled and renumbered.  Except for Reptil (who got
brought into 616 in the recent Initiative Special) they're all new to this
book, although I suppose it's possible they were carrying spears in the
background of HAMMER-era Initiative issues before this.  In addition to
continuing the Initiative mandate (with Justice, Tigra and Robbie Baldwin
carrying over from that book) there's a touch of Mighty Avengers as well
(Pym, Quicksilver, the Infinite Mansion) and the combined "black sheep of the
Avengers" feel of both books.  The specific group dynamic of the new class is
definitely more X-Men/New Mutants than most Avengers lineups, though, between
the age of the characters and the powers that range from quirky to downright
nasty.  Oh, and the angst.  Gage brings Mutant-level angst here.  Even the
happy shiny Super Hero Squad refugee has been given some angst.  Still, with
the proviso that angst could get toxic, it's a promising start.  The extra
pagecount that justifies the higher price bracket is used for profile pages
on the Academy members plus an interview with Gage.  And yes, you can expect
Academy of Super-Heroes references from me when discussing this title.
Recommended.  $3.99

     Young Allies #1: Marvel - Heroic Age banner.  If Academy follows more of
an X-Men group-formation model where powered youngsters are intentionally
gathered by someone for training, Young Allies hearks to the usual way of
forming new Avengers teams: a menace arises, whoever happens to be in the
area responds, and they form a team.  Of course, despite the ad-hoc nature,
it's naturally pretty well balanced in combat terms (to use City of Heroes
parlance, they have two Scrappers, a Tank, a Blaster and a Deftroller).  The
menace they rise to meet is pretty derivative and for the most part cardboard
cutout evil types, but I suppose their purpose in the story is less to be
recurring foes and more to be something that can be stomped next issue.  Like
Academy, the backpages provide info on the characters, although this time out
they all have backstories (except one, who only gets one page summing up his
origin from this issue and noting that he's the 616 version of someone) and
each entry save the last guy's ends with an "essential reading" list.
Recommended.  $3.99

     Hawkeye & Mockingbird #1: Marvel - Heroic Age banner.  I wasn't
originally going to get this...writer McCann didn't ring a bell, both
characters are rather messed up by recent events, and it felt like a riff on
Green Arrow & Black Canary.  But I got to see a preview copy and rather liked
it, so on my pull it goes.  :)  I like that the way Bobbi was brought back
wasn't used to negate all her character conflicts...in fact, her divergence
point is arguably where she had the MOST personal issues to deal with, and
then she got them reinforced while she was presumed dead.  In a way, the team
here isn't Clint and Bobbi, it's Bobbi and her fellow SHIELD ex-pats (who
shared her missing years fate to some extent) in the new WCA (not West Coast
Avengers).  Clint is along to lend a hand.  Like the other new titles this
week, it ends with a "who are these people?" feature, which is jointly
narrated by Clint and Bobbi.  This is the only place the reversion to Hawkeye
is mentioned, passed off as nostalgia.  No indication what this means for
Kate Bishop (Hawkeye in Young Avengers) though.  Anyway, it looks like McCann
is positioning this to be more of a caper book, where the good guys do some
shady things (i.e. Leverage, Burn Notice, etc) but ultimately ARE the good
guys.  Recommended.  $3.99


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 6/9/10: Gold Digger Peebri's Big Adventure #2,
Invincible #72.  Add Prince of Power #2, Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #3,
Gold Digger v3 #118.

Awards:

"One Of The Ingredients Is A Nigh-Mythical Substance...WATER" Award to The
     Transformers #8

"The Term 'Daddy Issues' Doesn't Even BEGIN To Cover This" Award to Secret
     Six #22

"Who Knew The Sexy French Maid Actually Cleaned Bathrooms?" Award to Booster
     Gold #33

"No, The Universe Isn't Billions Of Years Old, It Just Looks That Way" Award
     to Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1 (of 6)

"Are You Sure Finesse's Real Name Isn't Danielle Tracey?" Award to Avengers
     Academy #1

"Actually, There's Two Illegal Aliens On The Team, IIRC" Award to Young
     Allies #1

"So That's How Rain Of Arrows Works!" Award to Hawkeye & Mockingbird #1

   Dave Van Domelen, "Do you have any idea the kind of coronary my DAD would have if I started dating a SENIOR?" "Seriously? Your dad LETS you FIGHT CRIME. In a VENOM COSTUME." - Arana and Nomad, Young Allies #1