Standard Disclaimers: Please set appropriate followups. Recommendation does not factor in price. Not all books will have arrived in your area this week. Icestorm-related power outages SUCK. Rants, Capsules can be found on my homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants First Look Comments: Books I read over the weekend as First Looks, but didn't buy, so can't really say much in detail about. DC has stopped having First Looks, so it's just Marvel and Image...and there's word that Diamond doesn't want to bother with the program at all anymore. Books for next week - Mighty Avengers #6: Marvel - Essentially the big final reel explosion- fest and a bit of denounment, peppered with WAY too many archly self-aware thought bubbles. And the obligatory Skrull Impostor Revelation on the Page 22 Splash. If Bendis wasn't so in love with his own writing it might actually be readable sometimes, but this is certainly not one of those times. $2.99/$3.05Cn The Order #6: Marvel - Supernaut gets the focus this issue, but with the theme of "things fall apart" going on, it's hard to really say there's ANY focus to the story. Although, if I was giving Awards to First Look titles, this would be a perfect place for the old, "Making someone lesbian is not a substitute for character development" aphorism. ;) $2.99/$3.05Cn Cable & Deadpool #48: Marvel - Brother Voodoo is the team-up guest this issue, although Strange is still hanging about. It's your basic symbolic soul battle thing with the fate of all realities hanging in the balance sort of story...you know, "Tuesday". Recommended. $2.99/$3.05Cn She-Hulk v2 #24: Marvel - The story sort of wanders around, but given that it's time to establish the rest of the new status quo in the wake of the opening two-parter, that's kinda to be expected. PAD does a decent job of justifying why he's mostly ignoring previous characterization for Shulkie, although I hope he works in some of Slott's stuff later. Recommended. $2.99/$3.05Cn 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. Books of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Owly v4 X-Factor #26: Marvel - Chapter Seven of the stupid X-over. It's kinda distracting when Eaton draws Xavier to look exactly like Patrick Stewart, though. Especially since current Chuck can walk. Unlike #25, the story's not quite as self-contained, although a decent chunk of it follows Jaime and Layla, plus one part looks like it might be setting up a post-X-over storyline (poor Peepers). Mildly recommended. $2.99/$3.05Cn New Warriors #6: Marvel - And the first arc wraps up with revelations. Some petty, some major, some clearly faked. There's a certain amount of rah-rah involved too, but I can cope. Recommended. $2.99/$3.05Cn Fantastic Four #552: Marvel - The cliffhanger is resolved, there's a little talking, then lots of fight scene and oration. Plus some Valid Points. Recommended. $2.99/$3.05Cn Gen13 v4 #15: DC/Wildstorm - I dunno about you, but when the issue opens with Kat accidentally bumping into someone as dynamically as Barberi shows, and the guy DOESN'T fly crosstown, I become immediately suspicious. Then again, Barberi draws all the women as having breasts bigger than their heads and waists too narrow to contain internal organs, so I suppose one shouldn't try to read subtle meaning out of his art. In any case, the art doesn't have to carry it, Oliver ties the story together well enough by the end. Recommended. $2.99/$3.65Cn StormWatch Post Human Division Armageddon #1: DC/Wildstorm - Officer Doran gets to be the one to go on Void's Magical Mystery Tour in this part of the Armageddon arc. This one breaks formula in several ways, and it's about time, since we're running out of comics to do this in. I am amused by the fact that Gage seems to like these characters better than the rest, as most of them came through the end of the world pretty well. Heck, some got their dreams to come true. :) Recommended. $2.99/$3.65Cn Salvation Run #2 (of 7): DC - More crowd scenes and pointless deaths of minor characters, many of whom will probably be back in two or three years when editorial forgets they got killed off. However, the final scene is worth picking it up for. Recommended. $2.99/$3.65Cn Green Arrow and Black Canary #3: DC - Well, the reasoning behind the whole faked-death thing is explained. A tad tortured, but adequately covered. Unfortunately, the explanation takes the characters somewhat out of their milieu, IMO. The "Arrow Family" may have been a bad fit for Amazon action, but at least the neo-Amazons are mostly human. The new Real Threat is just a touch too cosmic. Mildly recommended. $2.99/$3.65Cn Booster Gold #5: DC - Well, I shouldn't be too surprised by the identities of the Prime Movers behind Rex Hunter...two of them are past favorites of Johns, after all. But I like 'em too, so it's all good. Mind you, reading through this, I kept thinking in terms of the Shadowfist/Feng Shui game's view of time travel..."But that wouldn't work, you'd just see someone else with a similar name in the same role!" or "Well, duh, of course he can't succeed, he doesn't control enough chi." ;) Recommended. $2.99/$3.65Cn Fallen Angel #22: IDW - Very superhero-y cover by Woodward. The altered style continues inside, with just a touch of Marc Wheatley to a child's view of superheroic art (although it shifts a bit as the story goes on, to reflect the mood). Interesting framing device, and it's nice to see Jude past his angst-wallowing. Recommended. $3.99 Transformers Beast Wars: The Ascending #3 (of 4): IDW - More crowd scene interspersed with exposition, and some more Pointless Deaths (and a noble sacrifice or two), but it's a bit more coherent this time out. And it looks like we get Antagony next issue. Mildly recommended. $3.99 (I got cover A, with the Blentrons). Gargoyles #7: Slave Labor Graphics - Possibly the most aggressive time-shifting I've ever seen in a comic, Quantum & Woody included. At least there's timestamps for all the scenes, but that doesn't really help at first, especially since some of the scenes seem to be irrelevant (at the moment, anyway). It does start to coalesce by the end, but I'm calling this one a form experiment that didn't quite work. Mildly recommended. $3.95 Gold Digger X-Mas Special #1: Antarctic Press - Aside from the usual assortment of pinups and a couple of mediocre one-page tales, there's three main stories. Fred Perry has Mistress Ayane try to go caroling (and no, I am not worthy to rock, sadly), Ben Dunn tells a story of Doctor Diggers as a young man, helping Save Christmas, and JL Anderson involves several of the supporting characters in a re-enactment of A Christmas Carol. Sort of. But it has Peebri, so you must read it! Recommended. $3.50/$4.05Cn Owly v4 A Time To Be Brave: Top Shelf Productions - This was ordered as a Christmas present for my niece Marah, who likes owls. Back when I expected it to show in October. At this point, it's now a 2nd Birthday present for her, I guess (in March). I'll wait and mail it once the holiday rush is over. :) Anyway, Owly is mostly word-free, using pictograms most of the time where words would be called for, I figured it'd be good for corru... introducing my niece to the visual language of comics. The art combines detailed backgrounds with cartoony characters in a manner similar to Bone (i.e. lots of people do this in general, but the specific look is Bone- like). This particular story is about overcoming fears, as the title suggests, and the story structure is a little complicated, with both flashbacks and hypothetical "imaginary" sequences, so I'll tell sis to read it first so she can explain some of the bits. Also, one important plot point is conveyed in words. But Marah's been scary-precocious already, she should be up for it. For more sophisticated readers, Runton makes good use of panel layout, shifting to pages with a single panel each, dwarfed by blank space around them, when he wants to convey a sense of loneliness or isolation. Recommended. $10.00 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 12/12: Still missing and might come in: Fallen Angel #15, PS238 #25, Transformers Beast Wars Sourcebook #1 (all of these have been covered in my CBR Special), Sky Sharks #2, Gamma Files, Official Handbook to the Gold Digger Universe #11. Doktor Sleepless finally came in, but I reviewed it a while back. Awards: "Guess He's Not So Dead After All" Award to X-Factor #25 "Well, Can't Say They Weren't Prepared For An Early Cancellation" Award to New Warriors #6 "Explanation Via Deconstruction" Award to Fantastic Four #552 "No, The Other Kind Of Ho" Award to Gen13 v4 #15 "Paris Is Burning...You" Award to StormWatch Post Human Division Armageddon #1 "Truth, Justice and the American Way!" Award to Salvation Run #2 (of 7) "Polymorphously Perverse" Award to Green Arrow & Black Canary #3 "Gotta Start Blowing Up The Joker's Feng Shui Sites" Award to Booster Gold #5 "No, It's Not" Award to Fallen Angel #22 "Which Quatrain Was This?" Award to Transformers Beast Wars the Ascending #3 (of 4) "Lexington's Not The Only One Jet-Lagged" Award to Gargoyles #7 "MOAR COOKIES!" Award to Gold Digger X-Mas Special #1 "(Insert pictogram here)" Award to Owly v4 Dave Van Domelen, "My innocence was FOREVER DAMAGED by your filthy book." - Peebri, Gold Digger X-Mas Special #1Back to the Main Rants Page.
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