May 26, 2010

     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 
                Back from Green Bay, and full of cheese.

     Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): None.

"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.

     Zatanna #1: DC - My store got this on time, but I wasn't going to get it
at first.  But since I found a bunch of other stuff at Powers Comics in Green
Bay while visiting my parents over the weekend, I decided to grab Zatanna as
long as I was making a buy.  It's a decent enough story with pretty good art
(but, as the Howling Curmudgeons point out, some pretty bad coloring
choices), but it's not going on my pull.  Like a lot of legacy characters (in
this case, Zatara's legacy), Zatanna has suffered a lot of concept flail as
different writers struggle with "keeping to the legacy" versus "eliminating
goofy golden age stuff".  Dini's hewing closer to the legacy (she's got the
fishnets and the sdrawkcab gnikaeps), so he has to find her a niche so that
he's not just retelling the same old Zatanna/Zatara stories.  He seems to be
aiming at CSI: Supernature in this opening issue...while a valid path, it
just didn't interest me enough to put this on my pull.  $2.99
     The Twelve Spearhead #1: Marvel - My regular store couldn't even get
Diamond to admit this exists.  This is a story set in WWII shortly before the
titular Twelve ended up in the trap that left them to sleep away the
generations, written by Chris Weston (who also inks the book).  Pretty much
all of the Twelve show up at some point, although most are carrying spears
rather than being at the point of the spear.  It's mainly Phantom Reporter
and Mastermind Excello driving the story, with others (including the Invaders
minus Namor) wending in and out.  It's a decent story, but I don't really
regret having missed it for months.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99
     Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #2: Marvel - I think I might have missed
this because it looks like an issue of Thor.  Thor's logo is on the top, the
book's own logo is nearly invisible along the bottom.  Mind you, Thor barely
even APPEARS in this issue, carrying a spear (well, a hammer) while Black
Widow, Invisible Woman and Iron Man take the spotlight.  The story,
unfortunately, is an example of what happens on those occasions when Tobin
writes down to his audience, with a mystery that's implausibly easy to figure
out (as in, no one should've fallen for it in-story).  Mildly recommended,
mainly for the little bits not tied to the plot.  $2.99
     Age of Heroes #1 (of 4): Marvel - Heroic Age banner, naturally.  This is
an anthology book, what attracted me were the JJJameson story by Busiek and
the Spider-Man story by Slott.  The Busiek story is half the issue, the Slott
story is...one page.  Oops.  The Jameson piece is pretty good, at least,
helping show how the zeitgeist has shifted and how political leaders are
fundamentally different from battle leaders.  The second longest piece, an
attempt at relationship comedy involving Brother Voodoo the Sorceror Supreme,
fell flat.  The two-page MI:13 story was okay, and the one page Spidey story
makes for a nice coda.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99


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 #7: IDW - Most of this issue catches up on the
straitened circumstances into which most of the Decepticons have fallen since
AHM ended, an echo of the Char years in the G1 cartoon, but there's a look in
on the Terran side as well.  Unfortunately, the obvious identity of the
narrator pretty much saps any shock value the Final Page Reveal might have
had.  EJ Su is trying out a new style here, and all the robots look like
they're wearing crude camouflage paint.  At first I thought it was meant to
make the Decepticons look grungy and ill-maintained, but even the Autobots
suffer from it.  I don't care for the look, it's even worse in its own way
than Pat Lee's "everyone is covered in tiny cracks" thing.  Mildly
recommended.  $3.99
     The Amazing Spider-Man #632: Marvel - "Shed" Part 3.  Lizard literally
sheds his old identity, gains some intelligence points and gains a new
power.  In the process he becomes, well...Dr. Dinosaur played completely
straight.  Substitute "monkey" for "mammal" and "lizard" for "reptile" and
you get pretty close.  But where Dr. Dinosaur's demented antics balance
threat and hilarity, the new Lizard is just kinda dull.  Ooh, he's more
powerful and ruthless and killed people.  Yawn.  He's also jettisoned (at
least for now) the core inner conflict that made him more than just a ripoff
of the Creature of the Black Lagoon.  Neutral.  $2.99
     The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #37: Marvel - I'm pretty sure the Annuals
got the same renumbering trick that the main book did when it hit #500.  :)
Of course, given that both of the stories in this issue are set in the early
days of Spider-Man's career, they could have un-booted the numbering and it'd
have fit right in.  The lead story by Karl Kesel is set between Avengers #11
and #16 (original series) and features the first meeting between Captain
America and Spider-Man.  The writing tries to capture the feel of 1960s
Marvel comics, but Siquiera's art really looks nothing like the era's,
throwing off the effect.  This story is the good kind of retcon, filling in
minor gaps without really contradicting anything.  The second story (an
official Untold Tale of Spider-Man by Busiek and Oliffe) tells of how the
in-setting Marvel Comics came to start printing Spider-Man comics, and why it
never really helped Spidey himself.  Both stories are interesting and well
told.  And if Age of Heroes is intending to hearken back to the past, I
suppose one way to go about it is to simply retell the past with updates.  :)
Recommended.  $3.99  (Hm, an Annual costing as much as many regular comics,
that's certainly not hearkening back to the old days.)
     Thunderbolts #144: Marvel - "The Heroic Age" banner.  New team, new
direction, but still Parker at the helm, so I'm sticking around.  I almost
said "totally new team", but there's representatives of several old Tbolts
rosters, including one from the Osborn run.  This is the obligatory
"assembling the team" issue, with flashbacks to the decisionmaking process
(which Cage was involved with, but didn't have the only vote).  At the very
end, of course, we get the new threat, big reveal, etc.  Given the way Parker
has set up this team, odds are pretty good there'll be two teams of
Thunderbolts soon enough (Mighty Thunderbolts and Dark Thunderbolts?), the
only real suspense comes in figuring out who'll go which way.  I expect at
least one of the "good" Thunderbolts will go with the "bad" team and vice
versa for various personal or professional reasons.  Anyway, a fairly slow
start, but a promising one.  Recommended.  $2.99


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 5/26/10: Gold Digger Peebri's Big Adventure #2

Awards:

"You Won't Much Like Brown Meat Either" Award to Zatanna #1

"I Guess Blue Blade Was Always A Buffoon" Award to The Twelve: Spearhead

"He May Want To Ask For Imprisonment In The Negative Zone" Award to Marvel
     Adventures Super Heroes #2

"Lead, Follow Or Get Out Of The Way" Award to Age of Heroes #1 (of 4)

"Never Let An Insecticon Do Your Social Engineering" Award to The 
     Transformers #7

"Abusing The Biological Metaphor" Award to The Amazing Spider-Man #632

"Wikipedia Now Predates The Avengers...Can I Get A Reversion On That?" Award
     to The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #37

"Sell When It Hits Mach XVII" Award to Thunderbolts #144

     Dave Van Domelen, "Hank Pym?  Damn, they will let ANYBODY in this
place." - Luke Cage, Thunderbolts #144

Fly back to the May 2010 Rants Page via Milwaukee.