Dave's Comicbook Capsules Et Cetera
Generally Monthly 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 month. An archive can be found on my homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants
I might actually get to meet Mark Crilley for the first time this week.


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

In this installment: Infini-T Force vol 8, Nancy Drew Mysteries: The Secret of the Old Clock Ep 4, Hooky vol 1, UnOrdinary vol 1, Adventure
Finders Newly Hired Adventurers, Orion, Spider-Man Mighty Mayhem, Fantastic Four #13, Justice League Dream Girls #1-4 (of 4), Gatchaman #19, Red Impulse #3, Thundarr the Barbarian #5, Vampirella #3, Godzilla Monsterpiece Theater Presents Godzilla's The Odyssey.


"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 month.

Expected next month: My Adventures With Superman S3 will have wrapped
up, and while Supergirl will be available to "buy" digital-only next month, physical media won't come out until September. I'm gonna wait for physical media.


Digital Content:

I will not be reviewing ongoing webcomics in this column, sticking with collections that I'll get in hardcopy form. eBook novels and streaming TV/movies will go above in Other Media. This is for full comics read in digital form, either because that's how they come out, or because I tried it out on the LibraryPass app but either didn't care for it or wasn't able to
get a hardcopy before the end of the month. The heyday of ComiXology
Originals is long gone, though, so there's not a lot of regular books I get digitally.

Nancy Drew Mysteries: The Secret of the Old Clock Ep 4: Patreon.com - At this point, Espinosa has definitely stopped trying to make the book chapters fit neatly into comic-sized chunks, as we get two pages ending chapter 7, all of chapters 8-9, and two pages starting chapter 10. He does seem to be prioritizing a pacing that leaves each episode at something of a cliffhanger, though. Anyway, at this point in the story the piling on of more-deserving-heirs finally wraps up and the titular old clock and its
secret enter the narrative, pushing Nancy towards wrapping things up. The
plot still relies a lot more on lucky coincidences than on Nancy being proactive, but that's a flaw of the source material, not of the adaptation.
The tone of the setting continues to be all over the place, with nearly Edwardian elements butting up against practically modern ones (although the high frequency of car trouble on Nancy's part does feel a lot more 1920s than 2020s). Recommended. $4.99 bought singly, or available as part of a Patreon membership.

Expected next month: Nancy Drew issues seem to drop at the end of the month more reliably now. There's a few things that hit LibraryPass at the
end of July that I'll get around to reading later and may or may not decide
to review (one is a spin-off from Killing Slimes for 300 Years, so I'll only review it if it's significantly different than the rest of that series).


Manga Collections:

Most of these are "tankobon" or collections of work serialized in a
weekly or monthly publication, although some were written directly for the collection. All of them have been translated from Japanese (or maybe Korean, although I don't think I'm reading any manhwa) into English. Things with a manga aesthetic but done in English originally will go in one of the sections below as appropriate.

Infini-T Force vol 8: Nakama Press - I think there's a cover mix-up, as the villain featured on this one isn't due to show up again until vol
9...this volume is all about Damian's plots and backstory, and how the only thing really separating Polimar from several of the sub-bosses is that he's licensed. Both Belle and Damian were heroes on their own worlds, until those worlds died and the Big Bad (Emi's dad) recruited them. He even tried to directly recruit Polimar, but the rejection was always fragile, and a push
from Damian was enough to flip him long enough to do a lot of damage. Damian doesn't have a power up combat form in the way previous sub-bosses do,
although he does acquire one in time for the end of the volume thanks to his plotting coming to fruition. The running theme is the question of what
justice means, and if you can even have humanity coexist with justice (something Casshan's arch-enemy also claimed is impossible), and it's impossible to really get an answer that will satisfy everyone...so you gotta find an answer you can live with. Or stop living. Meanwhile, Emi's
backstory gets even more tangled, although whether this was planned from the beginning or is a later retcon is uncertain. Recommended. $10.99/$14.99Cn, rated Teen 13+ (lots of fantasy violence and some black and white blood).

Expected next month: Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 8 (on the night of the 27th the store page claimed it was on the shelf at my local store, but on the 28th it was not, so it'll arrive next month), Happy Kanako's Killer Life vol 8, Infini-T Force vol 9, Ichi the Witch vol 4, Tank Chair vol 9, Cat + Crazy vol 4, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 14. Shipping the last week of August
but probably not in my hands until September are Go! Go! Loser Ranger! vol 18 and Shy vol 13.


Other Trades:

Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, whatever. If it's bigger than a "floppy" but not Manga, it goes here.

Note, while you could argue for the manga styling of some of the books
in this section this month, two are WebToon originals and one is a collection of previously-published-by-American-companies work, so I'm putting them
here.

Hooky vol 1: Harper Alley/WebToon - This is a complete series in three volumes, so I figured if I liked it there wouldn't be a whole lot of catching up to do, making it something worth trying in a slow month. I suppose the
most succinct way to describe the setting for this is "Kiki's Delivery Service's world, but witch burnings were only made illegal within living memory." A bit heavier on the Ye Olde Worlde trappings, but people (mundane and witches) drive cars and trucks in towns reminiscent of the sort of quaint European towns Miyazaki sometimes uses (the creator Miriam Bonastre Tur is
from Barcelona, so it fits). Actually, I think the creator just dove into
the story with some ideas about archetypes to use and didn't worry too much about whether they fit together. The initial main characters are siblings
who miss the teleporting bus to Magic School and rather than explain this to their parents decided to just sort of find other ways to learn magic for the semester and lie about where they are, hence the series title. By missing school, they stumble onto the Plot (turns out banning witch-burning didn't
make things okay between witches and normies) although it takes about half of this volume before the realize that they've done so. Looking back from that halfway point, I can see that the meandering chapters were basically set up
to introduce all the characters and the stakes and establish that the witch twins are Uniquely Powerful And Dangerous...but it still felt kinda
meandering to me. Like there was a checklist of business to take care of,
but no real intention beyond ticking off the boxes before the proper story could start. A good thing Tur does that definitely helps compensate for
times when speakers are off-panel or the bubbles are badly placed is that
each of the main kid characters gets their own color of speech bubble (light blue, pink, light green, yellow to start with, although secondary ones tend
to share blue-green) with adults and spear-carrier types sharing a few shades of light gray. Anyway, it does eventually settle on the main story,
although if the volume was less than its hefty 384 pages it might've ended a little too shy of launch. I'd go mildly recommended on this, I might pick up the other two volumes in the hope that the meandering is done.
$15.99/$19.99Cn, recommended for ages 8-12 (but that's no excuse for wobbly storytelling).

UnOrdinary vol 1: Harper Alley/WebToon - I got this a few months ago at Ollie's for super cheap, and decided to save it for an otherwise slow month, like this one. This one's also complete at four volumes, so also not a big threat to my storage space if I decide I want to finish it. (This has more
of a standard US comic page size, so it wouldn't go on my manga shelves anyway.) Structurally, this is your basic "Commoner kid manages to get into
an elite Japanese high school that's a snake pit of rich kid politics and survives by making friends with the richest girl in class, but there's a Dark Secret," sort of story. Yeah, specifically a Japanese high school, loaded
with the tropes, despite the author being from Massachusetts. However, and don't poke the premise too hard as it's flimsy, instead of (just) wealth, all the kids have superpowers, while the protagonist John is a "zero" without powers. (He also spends most of the volume looking nothing like he does on
the cover, making it a bit of an unforced spoiler.) This is a world where
lots of people have powers, and it just sort of formed a natural pecking
order without collapsing into post-apocalyptic fiefdoms ruled by the top
tiers. Additionally, there was apparently zero tradition of superheroes in their fiction until very recently, where it was introduced in a novel titled UnOrdinary, where the lone powered protagonist serves and saves a world of zeroes at the cost of his own life. The book was immediately banned
worldwide, but still managed to inspire high-tier people to become
vigilantes. John, our protagonist, is not just a zero at the school with the highest number of high-tier kids in the country (if not world), he's the son
of the author of UnOrdinary. So. There's a pretty big ask from the author
in terms of suspension of disbelief, even for an audience who knows My Hero Academia. Still, once you can get past that, the internal consistency is reasonably good, and this uses the same trick as Hooky with colored speech bubbles to make it a little less unclear who's talking when the art doesn't leave proper room for the speech bubbles or they all have to go into a panel with no people in it at all. I'm starting to wonder if this is something WebToons just encourages creators to do if they want a chance at getting physically published. Anyway. John has two Dark Secrets, the fact he has a copy of his father's ultra-banned book is revealed early on, but the main thrust of this first volume is uncovering the second one (which the back
cover sort of spoils, but I won't despite this volume being several years old...although you can probably figure it out from trope knowledge). John is always getting beaten up, despite displaying fairly impressive mundane
martial arts skills early and often. Whenever it looks like he might
actually win a fight, he disengages, and he seems to have some sort of PTSD around the matter. He's also been an influence (probably bad and good) on overachiever Seraphina, the school's ace (strongest powers, best grades, most powerful family, etc). The story begins when they've been hanging out for about a year, and in her flashbacks (clearly marked by black gutters on the pages, an appreciated touch) we eventually get to see what she used to be
like and John's slow campaign to try to save her from her own life, even if
it means becoming a slacker. Better a slacker than a tyrant, after all. By the end of the volume, it seems that John has set himself two goals: try to make his father's fictional vision a reality at least on the small scale, and perform penance for his Dark Secret. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure I want to keep reading this, unless other volumes show up at Ollie's. $19.99/$24.99Cn (but I paid $2.99), unrated.

Adventure Finders vol 1: Newly Hired Adventurers: Kickstarter (run by
the Indie Comics Network) - Okay, I've already reviewed the stories in this volume, the first five chapters of the series (the first four came out as floppies a few years ago as well). There's been some editing and revision,
and a fair amount of maps and character reference pages have been included
both in between chapters and at the end. A well-made package all told.
There's no cover price, so I guess if you didn't back this round you'd have
to get it as an add-on when volume 2 is crowdfunded, I backed at the $40
level for a softcover (I actually don't much like hardcover comics
collections, to be honest). They also tossed in some free #1's of other
Indie Comics Network books, but I decided to not review them since I neither purchased them on purpose nor was sent them with a specific request to
review. (If I'd liked any of them enough to buy more on purpose, I'd have review those, but none made the cut.) I recommend the series in general, and this is a decent physical package, although I'm not sure if you can even buy
it right now or if you have to wait for the next volume kickstarter.

Orion: DC - Ngozi Ukazu's sequel to her OGN Barda, this continues to retell Kirby's Fourth World with a more modern style of storytelling. It is not trying to be a reboot, as evidenced by the retro-style editor's caption referencing an issue of the original Mister Miracle series, just showing us different angles on the events. As indicated by the title, now is time to focus on Orion the savage New God as he grapples with the truth of his
origins (and with a number of Apokoliptian opponents). Ukazu's sense of
humor is different than Kirby's, but let it not be said that the original stories were wholly grim and without levity. If you are already familiar
with the story, this is a good adaptation. If you aren't, don't worry, previous knowledge isn't needed (not really even having read Barda, although you should go back and read that if you haven't already). Recommended. $16.99/$22.99Cn

Spider-Man Mighty Mayhem: Abrams Fanfare - The fourth book in Mike Maihack's young readers Spider-Man series, this picks up a few days after the previous one with a frog-transformed Thor coming to Spider-Man for help in finding a bunch of Asgardian artifacts that the Enchantress stole and then magically disguised. If you've been reading this series, you know the stakes won't be all that high, but Maihack does a decent job of making them feel high within the context of the kid-friendly setting. As in previous volumes, Spider-Man
is mostly accompanied by animals and the like, but this time they're all transformed Asgardians (Volstagg laments not that he was turned into a tub of ice cream, but that he's VANILLA, while Fandral is...a fan). The search travels through a somewhat bowdlerized version of the Nine Realms (like, the D'Aulaire versions I read at age 6 had more bite) before ending in a goofy fight scene. Okay, Ten Realms, this is Marvel's version. The complexity of storytelling is low, but I wouldn't say it condescends to the audience. Recommended if you don't mind Serious Characters being rendered less serious. $12.99/$17.99Cn, #9.99UK, all-ages.

Expected next month: Not expecting anything, I *might* grab Hooky vol 2, but not UnOrdinary vol 2.


Floppies:

No, I don't have any particular disdain for the monthlies, but they
*are* floppy, yes? (And not all of them come out monthly, or on a regular schedule in general, so I can't just call this section "Monthlies" or even "Periodicals" as that implies a regular period.)

Fantastic Four #13: Marvel - Johnny has a Clever Plan for tying up some loose ends, which goes a lot better than you might expect, until it goes exactly how you might expect. A cute idea that really would've worked better as an 8 page backup. Mildly recommended. $4.99, rated Teen.

Justice League Dream Girls #1-4 (of 4): DC - Up front, I have two main problems with this Pride Month event miniseries. First, it spins out of some Amanda Waller crossover crap that has Dreamer labeled a villain (Galaxy also had her own bad experience in an event comic, but it's not as big a problem
for me). Like, I consider the OGNs to be in an alternate universe from whatever passes for the mainline continuity at this point, and I didn't care for the reminders of why I avoid the mainline. Second, the series villain is The Key. Not the goofy Silver Age villain who should've been left in the
60s, but the kewl 90s reboot that is somehow even more dated and cringe. Anyway, the conceit is that at the start of things Dreamer is in a
self-imposed "not gonna wake up, this reality sucks" coma, with Galaxy having gone in with her. The first couple of issues have them cycling through
various art styles and themes, playing the parts of other heroic duos (well,
in one they basically split the Wonder Woman roles of princess and champion between them, but otherwise we get stuff like Dreamer as DCAU Batgirl and Galaxy as Supergirl, or Dreamer as Relevant Era Green Lantern and Galaxy as Green Arrow participating in the first Pride March. Interspersed with this
are scenes of the current Justice League (Guy is in a Guardians robe now and
I don't wanna know why) arguing over whether to kick Galaxy out for being Too Scary. So, like a third of this series is about the politics of the current
JL and I am actively disinterested in that. The rest might've made a decent
48 page one-shot, and there's certainly some good character moments here and there, but too much of this is picking up the pieces of Other Events. If you're interested in Galaxy and Dreamer from their OGNs but, like me,
otherwise avoid the mainstream DC stuff, this is skippable. This could've
been a good spotlight on the two main characters, but it's just padded out
with too much "The Green Lantern Corps is tilting fash again" stuff. There's backup stories in each, but the first three are just ads for other comics (Batwoman, one of the Green Lantern books, Poison Ivy). Only the last one is self-contained, an autobio comic by Klaus Janson. $4.99 each, rated Ages
13+.

Gatchaman #19: Mad Cave - The very villain-coded Phantom Ascendancy finally starts to be obvious enough about it that Gatchaman can no longer
write off their bad vibes as just being jerks. Meanwhile, the Neo-Blackbirds are helping. I can't really tell if Humphries is deliberately writing down
to a Kid Show level, or just lacks the ability to write nuance. This series continues to teeter on the edge of falling off my pull list. $4.99, rated Teen.

Red Impulse #3: Mad Cave - Another done in one story, but for the first time Red Impulse directly interacts with Gatchaman. Not just the team, the leader Ken. AKA son of the head of Red Impulse...who doesn't know that Racer
X is, er, I mean doesn't know that Captain Kentaro is actually his father. (Seriously, masked secret relative plots seem to have been huge in 1970s anime.) From what I recall about the Gatchman dub DVDs I got 20-some years ago, the show never really did much with the premise beyond "he's there to backstop Gatchaman." This issue puts a big wedge of tension between Kentaro and Dr. Nambu, and Kentaro has to disobey orders to get involved with this incident. It does make me wonder if the next (final?) issue will actually
move things forwards or explore another done in one concept. Recommended. $4.99. rated Teen+.

Thundarr the Barbarian #5 (of 6): Dynamite - Most of this issue is, I guess, a third timeline. The second timeline trio (drunkard Thundarr
timeline) plans to go back to 1994 and stop things but ends up being metatemporally too late and Thundarr is rendered a sort of immortal ghost by Gemini, forced to watch the new even worse timeline unfold, and witness the death of the last humans. All seems lost, until it isn't? I rather doubt
this will end up restoring the original timeline, for Doylist reasons I will get into momentarily. In any case, there's only one issue left despite the conspicuous lack of a "of 6" on the title or in the indicia, so somehow a Sunsword going somewhere very uncomfortable will need to fix things enough to leave open the possibility (sales permitting) of a followup series. Why do I think we'll get a fourth timeline out of this? Because the recent pattern of Nostalgia License Comics seems to insist on updating the characters for
Modern Sensibilities. So we get a miniseries that updates the character's origin, and then if sales are good and the license owner isn't annoyed, the
new version gets more stories. Why do we need radical updates of NOSTALGIA PROPERTIES? Pretty much the only people who are guaranteed to buy them liked the original. This isn't like movies, where to make money you absolutely
have to cater to non-fans (often at the expense of ignoring the existing
fans). But comics live in the corners of the market, why license a nostalgia property if you're going to distance yourself from the original? Sure, sometimes it works, especially if the original had a bit too much "of its
time" casual racism and you want to excise that (e.g. the recent Peter Cannon reboot). But too often the revamp just seeks to go dark and bloody, like a teenager pulling out their old toys and blowing them up with firecrackers or painting blood all over them. Yeah, the original Thundarr cartoon's BS&P limitations would never have let them show someone shoving a sword through someone else's chest while getting their skull split by the axe held by their victim...but does that actually add anything to what is fondly remembered
(when it's remembered at all) as a campy kid-safe post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery show? Sigh. I'm not against more gory stories, but why did this particular nostalgia property need to become one? Well, the final issue is already sitting in my pull folder waiting for the shipment minimum to be hit, so I guess I'll read and review it, but it'll have to REALLY stick the
landing for me to want to buy any followup series. Not terribly enthused
about the series at this point. $4.99, rated Teen (because this is America, and spurting gore isn't enough to push it to Teen+).


Vampirella #3 (Legacy #690): Dynamite - A bunch of plot threads are starting
to come together, as various characters with pieces of the story compare
notes and Vampirella starts to figure out how she's been getting jerked
around lately. Unfortunately for Doc Chary, the threads are coming together
in his office, and he has had it up to the damned stratosphere with all these crazy "vampiri" people and their batty personal lives and centuries-long conspiracies and vendettas and most of them are probably broke and it's not possible for him to get paid enough for this. Well, okay, a few are rich,
but they STILL can't pay him enough for this. (Despite being named for departed comics fan Mike Chary, I strongly suspect the good doctor is
something of a self-insert for Priest.) Recommended. $4.99, rated Teen+ (actually less gore than Thundarr, but a lot of sideboob, so I guess that merits the +).

Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theater Presents Godzilla's the Odyssey #1: IDW
- The ongoing "everything's a #1" series continues with what really should've been a miniseries, but I guess they wanted it all out in time for the big Odyssey movie. As one might expect, it skips a lot of stuff (including the inciting atrocity that's almost always skipped in adaptations), replaces monsters with kaiju (Scylla and Charybdis are Ghidorah and Titanosaurus, for instance), and has the gods narrate most of the story while claiming to be pulling the strings (which, to be fair, is how the Iliad went in the
original). Godzilla himself is explicitly Zeus's Hammer, so any time Zeus might interfere on Odysseus's behalf it's usually by having the Big G show up (although he doesn't try that with Calypso, sending Hermes like in the
original story). Tieri's story ends up feeling more like a Wikipedia plot summary, and Ilias Kyriazis's art is okay. The Scioli Robin Hood backup ends very abruptly, to the point I double-checked to make sure I hadn't missed an installment or two. Anyway, when I finished reading this issue, my main thought was, "Nice elevator pitch, now give me the actual story." Mildly recommended. $7.99


Expected next time: Skip month for floppies.


Dave Van Domelen, "I didn't realize your brother was a woman, Thor." "Occasionally he is, Spider-Man. But that woman is not Loki!" - Spider-Man Mighty Mayhem



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