October, 2013

     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 
                 The Flamingo War is coming to campus....

     A bit uneven for the first month with Hurley's.  Apparently Antarctic
Press is a "small publisher" as far as the Diamond reps are concerned, and I
had to go digital on this month's Gold Digger stuff.

     Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing this
time around.

     In this installment: Gold Digger #204-5, Gold Digger Halloween #9, Cow
Boy strip archive, Feast, Mastering Manga 2, Astro City #5, Samurai Jack #1.


"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 time.  Thor: the Dark World hits U.S. screens November 6,
though.  


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.

     Gold Digger #204: Antarctic Press - This is your basic sitcom plot, the
insecure partner testing the other, resulting in hurt feelings but in the end
no real damage to the relationship.  But Perry cranks it up to 11, making it
a multi-generational issue for the mothers' side.  Plenty of beefcake and
cheesecake, of course, and some good side elements.  Again, it's played like
a sitcom (hard not to, when the guy being tested for integrity was raised in
the jungle by squirrels).  Recommended.  $1.99 at ComiXology.

     Gold Digger #205: Antarctic Press - Back to action archaeology, and
picking up threads from the long-simmering Ayane subplot.  While most of the
issue is the main plot, with Gina and some students re-exploring a tomb from
early in the series and facing the power of wub, the last couple of pages may
not mean a whole lot unless you've been following Ayane's plot thread, but
it's more than just characters finding out things the long-time readers
already know (they now also almost know as much as the GD Universe entry gave
away years ago).  Recommended.  $1.99 at ComiXology.

     Gold Digger Halloween #9: Antarctic Press - Just two longer stories and
a pin-up this time.  The lead story hearkens back to the largely untold days
when Cheetah was a costumed superhero, and is one of those times where Perry
really needs to at least get someone to grayscale tone his inks.  His
hyperkinetic style of art is really hard to follow when it's just lines of
mostly the same weight.  Meanwhile, over in the second story, David Hutchison
has either radically changed his style since the last time I paid close
attention to something he drew, or the credits are incorrect.  Mildly
recommended.  $1.99 at ComiXology.

     http://cow-boy-hosler.livejournal.com/ has an archive of the Cow Boy
strips from around strip 85 to the end (posted in reverse order so you can
just page through the archive in order).  Worth a read if you like Jay
Hosler's later works (Clan Apis, Sandwalk Adventures) or late 90s comics
parody.  (No relation to the current comic strip Cow & Boy.)


Trades:

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

     Feast: Couscous Collective - The theme this time is food.  Tales of food
preparation, recipes, and stories built around meals.  The Skin Horse story
is pretty good, and some of the other vignettes are okay, but the recipes are
less interesting to someone like me who doesn't really cook.  It's possible
to make a recipe interesting to non-cooks, of course, but most of the ones in
here aren't.  Mildly recommended.  $8 plus shipping.

     Mastering Manga 2: Level Up with Mark Crilley: Impact - Mark Crilley's
back with another compilation of short lessons in drawing with a manga style.
It's written on the assumption that the reader hasn't necessarily read the
first one, so there's the usual page on materials, etc.  Starting with the
anatomy of a panel, it has a couple sections on components (Part 1: heads and
faces, Part 2: proportions and poses, which covers a lot of stuff like
clothing and chibis) before part 3 puts it all together.  The specific
choices of lessons within each section feel a bit arbitrary, though.  Part 3
is dominated by a few kinds of scene (forest, rainy day, desert) followed by
several examples of creating multi-panel sequences.  Still, aside from
putting out a huge multi-volume set all at once, you have to make choices of
what to cover and what not to cover.  This is a good complement to the first
volume.  Recommended.  $24.99/$27.99Cn (rather less on Amazon).

Floppies:

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

     Astro City #5: Vertigo - The framing sequence of the first issue
returns, with the Broken Man talking to the reader as his agent.  Various
things in his conspiracy map launch into stories that we're not supposed to
be seeing yet (a bit of pseudo-Lovecraft, a very short vignette about a
Kobra-like guy) and then a steampunky bit the Broken Man lets us see to keep
us out of trouble.  Decent short stories, and they'll probably connect up to
the overall arc in some way, but they do feel like odds and ends Busiek
didn't feel like writing complete stories about.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99 

     Samurai Jack #1: IDW - I believe this was solicited as a four issue
miniseries, but since it's IDW there's no evidence anywhere in the actual
comic that it's limited.  And, of course, since it's an IDW #1 there's ten
variant covers.  Some of those covers are by Tartakovsky, so while he's not
writing this or doing the interiors, he's not entirely uninvolved.  The setup
scene establishes the plot device Aku used to learn his mastery of time, and
sets Jack on a quest to reassemble said plot device so he can finally return
home.  The bulk of the issue, though, is Jack fighting a bunch of weirdos
(including a pretty weak Wolverine riff) in order to earn the first part of
the plot device.  As he's looking for threads to weave into a rope, the total
number of pieces (and thus the length of the quest) is arbitrary.  A
promising start, but it could get repetitive pretty quickly, and the writer
is an unknown quantity to me.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99.

     No pony comics for me this month, MLP:FiM #12 and Annual #1 came out on
October 30 and I won't be picking them up in Joplin until some time in
November.  Additionally, while I read several Transformers comics in October
that were packed in with toys, I reviewed those with the toys (and they're
reprints of stuff that came out months ago).

     Dave Van Domelen, "Please, no titles.  I am merely a giant, extremely
wise rat." - "Dish" in Feast