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.
Done for the summer semester!  Whee.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

     I administered the final exam for my course this morning, then spent the
afternoon grading it.  I'm a bit frazzled and brain-numb.  To add to the fun,
Diamond mis-shipped a chunk of my store's comics, replacing them with an
unpleasantly large number of copies of Jim Balent's Tarot (snappy comeback:
"You mean, more than zero?"  Yeah.  More like a dozen).  So I'm missing LSH
and Bill & Ted v2, plus Tick Days of Drama #1 didn't show up for me to decide
if I wanted to get.
     So, all around, today's word is "incompleteness".

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.

     None this time.  Didn't really have the time or energy.

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.

     Tick Days of Drama #0: NEC - REALLY a mini-comic, it's the size of a
business card, and 8 pages long.  But it's free, and it's in color.  It's a
bit incoherent (even for the Tick), but a decent teaser for the ongoing
series.  Which I didn't get a chance to check out.  Snap this up if you see
it.  Free/FreeCn
     Flare #26: Heroic Publishing - Not sure if it's me, or if this was just
that disconnected and "now for some exposition"-y.  The blatant HLA-teasing
is a bit less forceful this time out, at least.  Mildly recommended.
$2.99/$3.99Cn 
     Grimjack Killer Instinct #6 (of 6): IDW - The last bits of the "classic"
Grimjack setting fall into place in a fairly good climactic running fight and
tale of intrigue.  Recommended.  $3.99
     Fantastic Four #529: Marvel - Every so often, it's good to remind people
that EVERY member of the FF i really dangerous, each for their own reasons.
This is Reed's turn.  The Child Welfare subplot is still running and still
stoopid, but at least gets to play for some chuckles.  Recommended.
$2.99/$4.25Cn
     The Incredible Hulk: Destruction #1 (of 4): Marvel - Hulk is on the
title, but this is really the retelling of the Abomination's origin, updating
it to not rely so much on old Cold War stuff.  So far so good on PAD's story,
Muniz's art is a bit too "Image" for my tastes.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.25Cn
     OHOTMU Avengers 2005: Marvel - Okay, I'm too tired to fully read this
yet, but I did skim it.  It seems decent, given that a full treatment of the
Avengers would take about ten times the pagecount.  Oddly, Squirrel Girl gets
her own entry, while the rest of the GLA are lumped together in a group
entry.  Recommended.  $3.99/$5.75Cn
     Outsiders #26: DC - Okay, the high concept is that an old Batman and the
Outsiders case has loose ends that need dealing with, so the surviving
members of that team get together to do the dealing.  But rather than
triggering nostalgia, the flashback scenes just made me wonder if the old
Outsiders book was really that badly scripted.  Tomasi jumps around with
flashbacks and sometimes too-clever storytelling tricks, and while I laughed
out loud a few times at the beginning, I was just groaning by the end.
Neutral.  $2.50/$3.50Cn
     Otherworld #5 (of 12): DC/Vertigo - The fit hit the slan, as it were.
Things are definitely happening, but a lot of it feels perfunctory.  And the
narration style is a bit on the soporific side.  Mildly recommended.
$2.99/$4.00Cn 
     Astro City the Dark Age #2 (of 16): DC/Wildstorm - A good study on how
filters affect things.  Many of the events that happen (or we're told happen,
it's a bit exposition-heavy) here could be taken as either good or bad, but
the mood of the public and of the viewpoint characters sets up a feedback
loop of negativity.  Recommended.  $2.99/$4.00Cn

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 7/27:

     Tales of the Champions #1, Transformers Way of the Warrior TPB, LSH v5
#8, Bill & Ted TPB v2.

Awards:

Best Book: None this week either.  Bill & Ted v2 would probably have gotten
     the nod if Diamond had bothered to send us any.

"Skweeeeeed" Award to the Tick: Days of Drama #0

"There's Such A Thing As A Cover Telling TOO Much" Award to Flare #26

"Family Business" Award to Grimjack Killer Instinct #6 (of 6)

"Nanny 911" Award to Fantastic Four #529

"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068528/" Award to Hulk: Destruction #1 (of 4)

"I...Like...SQUIRRELS!" Award to OHOTMU Avengers 2005

"I, Personally, Woulda REMOVED The Ten Kilos" Award to Outsiders #26

I got nothin' for Otherworld, sorry.  

"Dude, Pointy Shoes" Award to Astro City Dark Age #2 (of 16)
Dave Van Domelen, "And the Germans lose in Patton." - Jeff Pierce, movie spoiler.