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Comics for January 18, First Looks Jan 25
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.
President coming to town on Monday, whee. Rants, Capsules can be found on my
homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants
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.
January 25, 2006:
All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #1 (of 12): Marvel
- Abraxas to Batwing. Tied into www.marvelunapp.com's listing efforts. This
is intended to supplement the recent year-labeled themed guides, not supplant
them, so there's a lot of minor characters. Entries range from a half page
for truly minor characters to three for big guns like Strucker. The
half-pagers do kinda mess up the alphabetical order, though. Same basic
format as the 2005 et al guides. Recommended. $3.99/$5.75Cn
Amazing Fantasy #17: Marvel - The new Death's Head shows some
personality this issue, but it's kinda blunted as yet, not much to go on
aside from some fairly generic Good Guy stuff. The Morbius backup is piles
of angst and murky art. Mildly recommended. $2.99/$4.25Cn
Black Panther v3 #12: Marvel - This one is set in post-Katrina New
Orleans, but at least only a few pages are devoted to heavy-handed politics.
The grand tour of all of Marvel's black heroes continues, and BP himself is
almost a background character...but at least doesn't seem as OUT of
character. Mildly recommended. $2.99/$4.25Cn
The Thing #3: Marvel - Good ending to the first arc. Recommended.
$2.99/$4.25Cn
eXiles #76: Marvel - 2099 wraps up fairly well, leaving as much of a
mess in the wake of Proteus as in New U. :) 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.
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #4: Marvel - Back to the 'regular'
writers this month, so Peter David wraps up his part of the crossover. With
lots of literary references to kick things off, who said comics weren't
educational? Fun issue with good Wieringo art and plenty of schtick.
Strongly recommended. $2.99/$4.25Cn
Transformers Infiltration #1: IDW - If I had to sum this up in one word,
it'd be "coy". Robot modes only barely show up before the final page (if you
discount the cover, of course), and while there's hints that aspects of
previous continuities exist in this version, it's all hidden behind layers of
X-Files-ish obfuscation. On the other hand, Furman does handle the resulting
"open mystery" pretty well, and the squishies are...not horrid. They may
never really grow on me, but that don't immediately repulse me either. Su's
art is decent, but one aspect bothers me: the faction symbols were clearly
tacked on during coloring, pasted in over the final colors in monochrome.
Not only do they stick out like sore thumbs, they are also not always angled
correctly to appear to be on the surface. My suspicion is that Su took the
"secret infiltrators" thing seriously and deliberately left off the symbols,
but editorial added them in later either because Hasbro insisted or because
some dip thought it would be a good idea to slap cheesy faction symbols on
(and they don't always appear, so it's cheesy AND slipshod). There's a three
page preview of the Beast Wars comic, which gives away less than the online
preview I've seen. The lettercol is amusing. Recommended despite the flaws,
though. $2.99
Robotech Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles #5 (of 5): DC/Wildstorm - One
of the dangers of a prequel book is that it can be made deliberately
incomplete, deferring the resolution to the main project. That happens here
in spades. The cliffhanger from #4 is resolved with unseemly haste, and then
the book meanders around telling how the cast of the Shadow Chronicles gets
assembled for their animated debut. It's like a 10 page comic with a 10 page
special preview backup (and a LOT of ads). Some fanwank in the second 10
pages, which may make it worthwhile to some buyers, but...ehn. Neutral.
$3.50/$4.75Cn
Infinite Crisis #4 (of 7): DC - Okay, the bridge-burning starts in
earnest here. I don't care how many press releases say that there will be no
cosmic reset button in the wake of this, it'll be there in some form. Plenty
of big hoo-wah action, and acres of pointless and often mildly graphic
death. Awkwardly jammed in between the scenes of mass carnage and a few more
scenes of expositioning about the grand plot are a handful of "setting up the
new titles" bits, showing the new versions of some of the characters that
have already been killed/ruined. Mildly recommended. $3.99/$5.50Cn
Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #13: DC - Speaking of graphic death, there's
at least a little of that here. You may not want to read it in front of
people who are eating (it's not splattergore, but it's disturbing). It's a
resolution issue of sorts, although as threatened in solicitations it's
really just the end of the preface. Unfortunately, looking at some of the
post-Infinite Crisis stuff out there, it may not end up being the preface to
the story we get to see. Yeah, I'm talking more about what is yet to come
than about what is in front of me, but this is the sort of story that demands
thinking about the future. Backup story is a cute structural thing, but
without as much impact as I think they hoped for. The lettercol is amusing,
but not as good as some previous ones. Recommended, but warily.
$2.99/$4.00Cn
Planetary #24: DC/Wildstorm - Given the long wait behind issues, I was
rather disappointed to see what amounts to a clip show. Mostly talking heads
going over the revelations of past issues, summarizing, clarifying and making
sure everyone in the story knows what's up. Then a big boom, which looks
nice, but lacks, um, impact. Mildly recommended. $2.99/$4.00Cn
Conan #24: Dark Horse - A very special issue of Conan, in which our
young barbarian thief learns some important lessons. And even lives to
ponder them, despite himself. :) Also, bewbies. The Two-Gun Bob strip is
better than most. Recommended. $2.99
Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots TPB: Dark Horse - A collection
of the first two years of the webcomic, with a commentary track (or, as they
used to be known before DVDs, annotations) by the creators. The "sketchbook"
of additional material is, well, two pages. Somewhat disingenuous. Other
than that, the only new content is the commentary and a few essays. Still,
it's a decent pagecount (the number if which I cannot say, there's no page
numbers and I'm NOT counting them by hand) for a decent price. With material
that is only sometimes indecent. And at least one Transformers reference.
Recommended. $12.95
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 1/18:
Transformers Way of the Warrior TPB (which shows as "backordered" on
Diamond's system, meaning they're out) Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder
Lizards GN, Exalted #1, Transformers Fallen Star TPB, Keif Llama V2.1,
Captain America and the Falcon: Secret Empire TPB. Add PS238 #14, but I'm
making a trade for the Transforemrs TPBs, so will probably have them marked
off next week.
Awards:
Best Book: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #4
Blackarachnia Memorial "Those Aren't Breasts, They're Egg Sacs" Award to
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #4
"Decepticons Shop At Reprolabels' Discount Bin" Award to Transformers
Infiltration #1
"I AM INVINCIBLE!" "You're A Loony!" Award to Robotech Prelude to the
Shadow Chronicles #5 (of 5)
"Time To Split" Award to Infinite Crisis #4 (of 7)
"I Didn't Mean Split THAT Way" Award to Legion of Super-Heroes v5 #13
"OSHA Will Hear About This" Award to Planetary #24
"Heaping Mounds...Of Gold And Jewels" Award to Conan #24
"Maybe It DOES Eat Kids" Award to Penny Arcade Attack of the Bacon Robots
Dave Van Domelen, "Seriously, Reed. 'What a lovely outfit?' You sounded like Eddie Haskell." "I have no idea who that is." - Tony Stark and Reed "doesn't watch TV" Richards, FNSM #4
Also, I got a coupon in my Lego Magazine for Eggo waffles. Yes, they're doing a Lego My Eggo promotion. Dude.
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[It's perfectly reasonable that the character's not a pop culture junkie. But she writes mystery novels, and pretty much any fiction writer is also a reader so she'd encounter references in books. She has also spent time in a foster care system as a teenager, which again should expose her to some of the big things. She's had at least one serious romantic relationship during her studies, so she'd pick up something from hanging out with someone who's not a pop culture vacuum. But as I recall, she said "I have no idea who that is" in response to someone saying "Darth Vader", which would imply she's lived in a hermatically sealed room with no Internet/tv/movies/conversation for her entire life.]
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And she knew who Darth Vader was.
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Oh right.they're putting him in Iron Man Armor with mechanical arms & spats and getting rid of the marriage.
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And knowing the upcoming spider-crap, really dampaned FNSM.
IC3...wow..how pointless...and nice that a major Gotham Central event didn't happen in Gotham Central.
and Planetary...didn't we just have a recap book in this? It was the dummy's Planetary guide..Here's why each issue happened explanations.
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