November 24, 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 
     Moving the Missing Books list to the top, since it's so big.

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

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 11/24/10: Invincible #72, Tom Strong and the Robots
of Doom #3, Transformers Ironhide #4, Gorilla Man #2, Atlas #4, Official
Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z Update #3 (which I probably won't bother
reviewing if it ever comes in), Guarding the Globe #1-2, Dynamo5 Sins of the
Father #3, Science Dog #1, Women of Gold Digger #1 and Gold Digger Books of
Magic #2, Chaos War #1, Taskmaster #2, Transformers Drift #4, Tron Movie
Adaptation #1, Official Index to the Marvel Universe v2 #7, Tom Strong and
the Robots of Doom #6, Tron Betrayal #2, Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #8,
Chaos War Dead Avengers #1.  Add Shadowland Power Man #4, Transformers
Timelines G2 Redux and Gold Digger v3 #123.  Looks like next week I do
another AP mail order (give Diamond a week to get GD #123 in, since the
shipment got warehouse-split again).


"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.

     Scott Pilgrim vs. The World DVD: Yeah, I'm still not buying BluRay.
Gimme a break, I finally got my VHS stuff transferred to DVD this month.
Anyway, I was gratified to see that the DVD release of this movie doesn't
follow the trend of most big releases in 2010 in terms of being stripped
down.  In fact, there's loads of extras, including bloopers and an impressive
number of deleted scenes and a completely different endgame (i.e. they wimped
out and focus-grouped who Scott should end up with).  One of the "deleted"
scenes is actually a series of reshoots of the same scene as they tried
tweaks of dialogue and changes in camera angle, nice for the Process Geeks.
The Blu-Ray has even MORE stuff, mind you, but the DVD's got enough extras to
be worth my while to buy.  Recommended.  $20 price point.

     Firebreather: Cartoon Network - I never read the comic on which this is
based, it was part of the Image launch that also gave us Invincible, but I
never really got into it.  Not that there's been as much to get into, mind
you.  The premise has promise, but this movie just makes me want to roll back
the clock and see the adventures of the main character's parents before he
was born.  Just not caring about Duncan himself.  It doesn't help that this
movie is littered with lazy writing...I don't mean places where we need to
suspend disbelief, which will be inevitable when your protagonist is the son
of a human and a kaiju.  I mean just lazy writing where we're supposed to
ignore stupid stuff for the sake of moving the story along.  By the time the
big fight scene at the end came along, I wasn't even interested enough to pay
attention to the climax.  Peter Chung's visual direction is okay...not as
good as his Aeon Flux work, but better than the frankly wooden action
sequences of Phantom 2040 (which I watched a lot of recently as I transferred
my tapes to DVD).  Overall, I can't really recommend spending 90 minutes
watching this.  It's repeated on November 26 if you want to give it a shot,
though. 


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.

     Nothing got shaken loose this week.  In fact, only two books on my pull
even shipped to my store, and one of those wasn't even on the release list
for this week.


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.

     Transformers Sector 7 #3 (of 5): IDW - The generational tale picks up 20
years later, as the AllSpark-awakened car that got away last issue hooks up
with Bonnie & Clyde.  After a little reformatting, it looks a lot like the
recent Hubcap toy, but is never named and is not the same as the character
described in the toy's bio note.  Its arms are based on Ransack's machine gun
arm, though.  The writing isn't any more historically accurate than last
issue, but this time Barber has the excuse that he's really homaging the
Bonnie & Clyde movie rather than trying to do significant historical research
here.  Chee's art is okay, although I prefer his work on Lovecraftian stuff
over this.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99
     Amazing Spider-Man #649: Marvel - Had to get this one at Hastings.
Humberto Ramos really goes nuts in depicting the Hobgoblin, but manages to
keep normal people from looking totally mutated.  For his part, Slott puts
enough story in that this feels like two issues (although it is oversized),
and plenty of his usual crackling dialogue.  Recommended.  $3.99
     Gold Digger Books of Magic #3: Antarctic Press - Guess Diamond will
never ship #2.  This issue focuses on offensive spells, and reads like the
parts of RPG rulebooks that I tend to skim past (Charm Trees, yawn).  The
illustrations are interesting, though.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99

     Yeah.  That's it.  Should I be giving thanks to Diamond for helping me
get used to the idea of not buying comics anymore?  They certainly don't want
to SELL me any.

Awards:

"They Didn't Shoot A Threesome Ending, Though" Award to Scott Pilgrim vs. 
     the World DVD

"Welcome To Five Minute Biology Class" Award to Firebreather

"I Suppose We Could Call This Transformer 'Getaway'" Award to Transformers
     Sector 7 #3 (of 5)

"It's Fashion Week In Spider-Man" Award to the Amazing Spider-Man #649

"Brianna Want Big Boom" Award to Gold Digger Books of Magic #3

     Dave Van Domelen, "The Black Cat thinks THIS is tasteful.  Oh, God.  I
must look like a total skank." - Norah Winters, the Amazing Spider-Man #649

Gobble on over to the November 2010 Page.