March 30, 2014

     Dave's Unspoilt Capsules and Awards
     Intermittent Picks and Pans of Comics and Related Media

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 
     Spent almost my entire spring break doing job interview stuff.

     This is a pretty heavy month, comparatively speaking, in part because a
bunch of stuff from the end of February didn't get picked up until March.
I've given up on Diamond spitting out Gold Digger in a timely manner, though,
and returning to buying directly from AP's online store (so #207-209 will be
arriving for me in April).

     Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): My Little
Pony: Friendship is Magic #17

     In this installment: Justice League: Trapped in Time, Sparks,
Transformers: Autocracy TPB, The Dumbest Idea Ever, Astro City #10, Ninja
High School #176, Gold Digger Holidays Special #3, Samurai Jack #5-6,
Serenity: Leaves on the Wind #2-3, My Little Pony: Friends Forever #2-3, My
Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #16-17.


"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.

     Justice League: Trapped in Time: DC/WB - This is basically a
Superfriends episode (Legion of Doom era) with modern animation and the
addition of some LSH elements.  So the plot and dialogue are pretty cheesy on
purpose.  Between the animation style and some of the characterization
choices, though, I kept expecting Karate Kid and Dawnstar to find Aang in an
iceberg.  Overall, I found it a little too self-consciously retro.  Bonus
features included two Superfriends eps involving time (but neither involving
the Legion of Doom), perhaps to try to make the main feature look a little
better by comparison.  Mildly recommended.  $15 or thereabouts.

     Sparks - The Origin of Ian Sparks: Image Entertainment - The packaging
claims this was based on a graphic novel, but the only reason I'd heard of
this movie before seeing it on the shelf at Walmart is that one of the
regulars on the AllSpark.com board (Daniel Ross) is in it.  Not a big enough
part to be listed on the box, mind you.
     The aesthetic is a sort of flattened semi-relistic thing like the Spirit
movie, which both captures the feel of pulp-era comics and also lets them get
by with less expensive CG backgrounds.  ;)  The acting is...okay.  Veterans
like William Katt and Clancy Brown turn in good performances, but some of the
unknowns are iffy.  Maybe they're just not well-suited to the noir-flavored
writing.  (It bills itself as noir, but it felt more like regular "moral
compass on the fritz" pulp.)  Oh, and given that Jake Busey (son of Gary) is
in it, I kinda expect this to show up on RiffTrax at some point.  
     A decent movie.  A little bloody in places, and occasional salty
language, but a PG-13 or soft R I'd guess (they didn't get it rated).  And it
has the advantage of being an actual heroic story (albeit with some rather
unheroic actions along the way) that is what it is, rather than trying to
deconstruct or ironically sneer at the genre.  Recommended.  $9.96 at Walmart.


Digital Content:

     Unless I find a really compelling reason to do so, I won't be turning
this into a webcomic review column.  Rather, stuff in this section will be
full books available for reading online or for download, usually for pay.  I
will often be reading these things on my iPod if it's at all possible.

     Transformers: Autocracy TPB: IDW - A bunch of digital comics were
offered for free for the SXSW meeting, so I grabbed the collected edition.
It continued in much the same style as the issues I bought, but tended to
whipsaw around to get new characters and concepts in place in perhaps overly
compressed storytelling (each "issue" is about 8 pages of content).  It does
a decent job of finishing the origin story of the IDW-verse Optimus Prime,
and making the Autobot establishment so thoroughly vile that Raksha might
even consider it an honest history.  It tried a little too hard to make the
"You who have no mercy" scene from the 1986 movie fit into the beginning of
the war rather than the end, sort of like how Star Trek: Into Darkness got a
bit forced when it tried to make lines frmo Wrath of Khan work.


Trades:

     Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, pocket manga, whatever.
If it's bigger than a "floppy" it goes here.

     The Dumbest Idea Ever!: Scholastic - With the Amelia Rules! series
ended, Gownley has stepped back a ways.  All the way, in one sense.  This is
an autobiographical graphic novel about how Gownley went from just another
kid drawing comics in his notebooks to a gosh-darned real pro.  With the
benefit of being told from this end, Gownley was able to give "real life"
more of a story structure (something lampshaded in the story itself, where
Jimmy and his friends argue that foreshadowing never happens in real life).
     Amusingly, while the story ends with young Jimmy's decision to go ahead
and write a comic about himself and his friends, THIS is not that comic.  He
wrote an entirely different autobio comic 20 years ago or so, in a rather
different style than his current one.  So this is a meta-autobio comic.
     The one thing this doesn't have that Amelia Rules! had is that Jimmy's
real life group of friends isn't as conveniently weird and interesting as the
fictional friends Amelia was surrounded by.  So the result is a little
subdued, because as much as he may creatively mis-remember or exaggerate what
really happened...it really happened, and the raw feed of life isn't as
interesting as fiction, most of the time.  Still, recommended.
$11.99/$12.99Cn 


Floppies:

     No, I don't have any particular disdain for the monthlies, but they
*are* floppy, yes?  

     Astro City #10: DC/Vertigo - The Winged Victory arc ends, and turns into
a polemic against the dangers of making everything about some philosophical
principle.  Like making everything be about women vs. men rather than
"remember when we used to DO things?"  Other than that twist, it was a fairly
standard "hero regains confidence and defeats the attempts to undermine that
confidence by punching the badguy in the face a lot" story.  Mildly
recommended.  $3.99

     Ninja High School #176: Antarctic Press - This was part of a kickstarter
campaign to get NHS rolling again, although the issue will be available (with
a different cover, IIRC) to whatever retailers can get Diamond to cough up AP
books as well.  Ben Dunn was involved in the writing of this issue, but Steve
Ross gets main writing credit with Dunn on art.  Like the short-lived V2,
this is moving the story to a new version of the universe, with different
takes on characters, etc.  However, this particular issue explains it by
having the main universe fall prey to a horrible fate, with a handful of
refugees going to the new universe in the hope of eventually returning with
new allies to liberate their home.  A decent start, in that respect.  Dunn's
art is somewhat inconsistent, as if he's been trying out new style elements
and hasn't decided yet which should stick.  Mildly recommended.  Not sure
what the retail version price will be.

     Gold Digger Holidays Special #3: Antarctic Press - The only new AP book
my current store has actually shipped in several months of trying, and I'm
pretty sure it's all reprints.  At least, the various Christmas and Halloween
stories all felt pretty familiar.  It doesn't help that it includes two
different "Were-rats try to steal Christmas" stories from different years.
If anything, the order of the two is wrong, because the first one implies
that they were on their way to giving up on the idea themselves, which makes
the second one feel like it totally ignored the first.  Switching would make
more sense.  Mildly recommended.  $3.50

     Samurai Jack #5: IDW - So, the threads of time thing wrapped up in a
pretty weak "only enough power to do one thing, and you suddenly need to do
something other than go back to your own time" ending.  Meh.  Buyer's regret
on the entire first arc.  $3.99

     Samurai Jack #6: IDW - Giving this one more arc, if only because the
premise of "Jack and the Scotsman get turned into women" has promise.  The
execution so far is good enough I'll hold on to the end, but I get the
feeling I'll be dropping this book soon.  Which is a pity, since it's one of
the few I get that Diamond has no trouble shipping.  Very mildly
recommended.  $3.99

     Serenity: Leaves on the Wind #2-3: Dark Horse - Speaking of books on the
cusp, Zack Whedon doesn't really seem to have the hang of pacing a comic.
It's like he's trying to make each issue cover a whole episode's worth of
content, and making a hash of the pacing as a result.  A summary of the story
in these two issues would sound pretty good, but actually reading it is like
watching a show when someone else is randomly hitting fast forward on the
DVR.  This isn't even a case of "writing for the trade," this  is just simple
disjointedness.  Mildly recommended.  $3.50 each.

     My Little Pony Friends Forever #2: IDW - Discord and the Cutie Mark
Crusaders, and somehow there's still a planet left when they're done.
Whitley and Fleecs have Discord help the CMC run through a whole bunch of
scenarios that would be impossible without his magic in an attempt to find
ever more outre cutie mark possibilities.  And yes, this includes a Star Trek
riff, so Discord ends up in Q's magistrate outfit.  A bit of fluff, but a
decent read.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99

     My Little Pony Friends Forever #3: IDW - Ted Anderson and Agnes
Garbowska tell a tale of an adventure had by Spike and Celestia.  The premise
is simple enough: find some macguffins to use in making a present for
Twilight Sparkle's birthday.  But since this is Equestria, monsters and
natural disasters are part of the equation.  This is very much a
worldbuilding sort of story, not only reinforcing the "Celestia was
deliberately putting Luna through hell in Microseries #10, it's not always
like that" point, but also explaining why Celestia doesn't ride to the rescue
in the cartoon very often (and when she does, it's often ineffectual).
Basically, she wants her students to learn to do things on their own, and has
been around long enough to know when her help is REALLY needed, and when her
students can do it themselves (albeit with difficulty).  Unfortunately, there
seems to be a pretty narrow range of problems where Celestia feels the need
to act and where she doesn't get jobbed...which I suppose reflects well on
the quality of her students.  Recommended.  $3.99

     My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #16: IDW - Much like the CMC/Discord
story the same month, a lot of this is just an excuse to run characters
through various pastiches.  The ponies in the book try to stay ahead of the
Bookworm by creating their own stories, mixing and matching genres with wild
abandon.  But it's just marking time until a Stern Talking To convinces the
Bookworm to mend its ways.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99

     My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #17: IDW - Ahhhh, Price and Cook
return.  This one looks like it's going to do some serious exploration of
backstory, so there's always the danger of being contradicted by a later
episode, but Cook's writing is enjoyable enough that I don't mind if it ends
up being a "counterfictional".  Celestia dives into another magic mirror
(related to the Equestria Girls one, but not the same) and vanishes, leaving
Luna to run everything herself for a week before Luna summons the Mane Six to
help out.  A goodly chunk of the issue involves the backstory of Celestia and
Starswirl the Bearded in the time leading up to the Nightmare Moon incident,
and promises to explain how Starswirl's understanding of friendship was
deficient (at a guess, he didn't think friendship could redeem someone on the
other side of the mirror, Celestia did, and at the beginning of the story she
went to give it another try).  Lots of promise, and a cracking good issue on
its own (as opposed to the somewhat tepid "shows promise" reviews of some
books above).  Oh, and there's a T.rex Fluttershy.  As with other Cook/Price
books, Katie Cook does a short piece with her own art at the end, in this
case explaining how Starswirl got his hat.  Strongly recommended.  $3.99

     Dave Van Domelen, "I hope there aren't any monsters in here."  "WHY
would you SAY that?  That is INVITING that kind of stuff to happen!" -
Rainbow Dash and Applejack, MLP:FiM #17

Back to the 2014 Rants Page.