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 Now to apply for tenure, which doesn't mean much in Texas anymore.
Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): The Glass
Scientists vol 1-2
In this installment: Watchmen Chapter 1, Moon Girl's Lab, Easygoing
Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic Turns a Nameless
Village into the STRONGEST FORTIFIED CITY vol 3, Go Go Loser Ranger vol 11,
The Great Cleric vol 11, Tank Chair vol 1, Chainsaw Man vol 16, Delicious in
Dungeon vol 11-14, Delicious in Dungeon Adventurer's Bible, The Glass
Scientists vol 1-2, Failure To Launch: a Tour of Ill-Fated Futures, Fantastic
Four #23-25, Vengeance of the Moon Knight #8-9, Ultraman x Avengers #1 (of
4), My Adventures With Superman #3-4 (of 6), Gatchaman #2-3, Vampirella #671,
Power Rangers Infinity One-Shot.
A bit of a side note since I'm noticing a pattern in some of this
month's reviews: sometimes thinking more deeply about a piece of
entertainment makes me like it less. The "Spirit of the Staircase" is that
situation where, on the stairs outside a theater, thinking about what you
just saw results in finding flaws. It was enjoyable at the time, but once
you're out of the immediate moment, it's hard to remember why you thought it
was so good. And that's going to happen sometimes, definitely more often
when you deliberately go back to the metaphorical staircase to think about
something a few hours or days later. There's several things below that were
perfectly good entertainment at the time, but upon writing the reviews, I
find myself lukewarm at best.
And that's okay. There's other times when looking more deeply reveals
even more to like, even if I'm risking that I might like the fanfic I'm
creating in my head about the work and the themes and stuff I'm seeing
weren't put there by the creator.
This is, admittedly, kind of a bad month for fault-finding, but don't
worry, I'm not turning into a grump or anything along those lines.
"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.
Watchmen Chapter 1: DC/WB - Okay, a two-movie adaptation of the original
comic, leaning HARD on Dave Gibbons being involved to give it legitimacy. If
you can put aside the "not enough legitimacy" issue, it's a pretty good
adaptation on a technical level. It uses things that animation can do that
comics can't do in order to compensate for some of the things comics can do
but animation can't (or doesn't do well). There isn't quite the density of
background information the comics provided, but they do a very good job of
getting the worldbuilding done. While CG, they did a decent job of making it
look like 2D cel animation in the style of Gibbons (they couldn't resist
making Rorschach's mask blatantly CG so it looked more "impressive" though).
The voice work was generally competent, although I do wonder at the choice to
have Jeffrey Combs in it voicing someone other than Rorschach (the Rorschach
voice acting was pretty pedestrian). If you're wondering about the pacing,
the cliffhanger point is Rorschach's capture by the police, although they did
admit to shuffling the order of a few things in the Making Of featurettes.
On a craft level, recommended. But it's not so good that I'd suggest anyone
set aside any ethical stance against giving DC money for a non-Moore Watchmen
project. Price varies by store and format.
Moon Girl's Lab: Marvel/Disney+ - While we wait for the third season,
Disney+ dropped (which I wasn't really paying attention, so not necessarily
this month) a batch of 3-5 minute shorts built around Schoolhouse-Rock-style
edutainment songs and not really telling much in the way of stories. If you
skip the repeated end credits, you can get through all of them in half an
hour. The animation is up to the show's standards, but the songs are...well,
they're no Schoolhouse Rock, and some of the situations are painfully
contrived to make the lesson work. The science varies from questionable to
simplistic but essentially correct, so it doesn't really do a great job on
the education side either. Neutral.
Digital Content:
Unless I find a really compelling reason to do so (such as a lack of
regular comics), I won't be turning this into a webcomic review column.
Rather, stuff in this section will generally be full books available for
reading online or for download, usually for pay. I will also occasionally
include things I read on Library Pass (check to see if your public library
gives access to it), although the interface can be laggy and freeze
sometimes.
Nothing this month.
Manga Collections:
With manga collections coming to dominate my reading habits, I decided
to formally split them off from Trades (informally they'd already been split
for a while).
A LOT of stuff in this category arrived right at the end of the month,
making it a bit of a rush to get them read in time for a September column.
Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic
Turns a Nameless Village into the STRONGEST FORTIFIED CITY vol 3: Seven Seas
Entertainment - And now we take a turn into strangely innocent yet still
creepy harem manga as Lord Van (10 years old in body, 30-something in mind)
acquires a couple of potential brides who are suitable for his apparent age
while he keeps mooning over his hot nanny (and knowing it's Inappropriate).
The cliffhanger of last volume is resolved with a speed and ease that most of
the defenders find unsettling...and the other regional powers find downright
CONCERNING. And that's where most of the actual challenges of this volume
come from, dealing with their neighbors who were pretty sure there was just a
tiny hamlet with nothing of value, not the STRONGEST FORTIFIED CITY. Van has
to at least be present for diplomacy with both demihumans and a
representative of the guy who used to nominally control his new territory,
and alliance by marriage is glaring at him from multiple angles. I suspect
one of my concerns with the series (that Van isn't really changing production
magic's status in general, just being massively OP himself) might dovetail
with one of the bridal prospects, although that may just be hopeful thinking
(it'd solve not just my objection, but also give Van a way to relate to one
of the girls other than potential marriage). Anyway, this is more or less a
taking stock pause, with Van's preparations and earlier work paying off and
going more to the background as he has to focus more on his (considerable)
people skills instead of his bottomless font of mana. Recommended.
$13.99/$17.99 rated Teen 13+ (mostly fantasy violence and some implausibly
large breasts)
Go Go Loser Ranger vol 11: Kodansha - Bits and pieces of the origin of
the Dragon Keepers come out in flashbacks that motivate the monster-lovers,
founded in part by a Keeper who resigned in disgust. A bit of an Omelas
situation is at the root of things, so while the corruptness of the Keepers
has been apparent from volume 1, it's clearly not a thing that developed over
time, they were rotten from the word go. A devil's bargain to defeat
invaders, sure enough, but a house of lies nonetheless. Otherwise, lots of
fight scenes with characters either introduced last volume or otherwise kinda
background...definitely something that would've been easier to follow in
color. Recommended. $10.99/$14.99Cn rated Older Teen 16+ (violence and
dismemberment, a bit of body horror)
The Great Cleric vol 11: Kodansha - Luciel should start a support group
with Lord Van and Yuna (Bear Girl), for isekai protagonists who just want to
have a nice comfortable life and instead keep finding the reward for a job
well done is another job. This arc continues Luciel's growth from the Best
Salaryman to an actual leader who has to trust in his subordinates and think
beyond the job he's given. (And know how far he can trust certain
subordinates...those dwarves need a very very short leash.) The plot also
advances a little more quickly in terms of the labyrinth near Yenice than I'd
expected, but the reason for rushing it worked pretty cleanly. I do wonder
if Broccoli Lion decided to accelerate the story, or at least wrap up a chunk
of character development arc that they'd been getting tired of. Recommended.
$12.99/$17.99Cn rated Older Teen 16+ (violence, but I think they're just
staying consistent with other volumes that have more innuendo)
Tank Chair vol 1: Kodansha - Okay, this is very bloody and gruesome and
not particularly serious. Think Marshal Law's setting, full of criminals and
gangs who functionally have superpowers via genetic splicing and cybernetics
and stuff, with everything looking very uncomfortable for the user. The
protagonists are escapees from an assassin school who have gone freelance in
a particularly nasty slumtown, with the older brother being the talented one
until he takes a bullet for his sister and goes into a coma. The only thing
that can awaken him is when he senses "murderous intent" (this is later shown
to be more of a psi ability, using parts of his brain not affected by the
bullet, and it is apparently a common enough talent that there's known, if
usually fatal, ways to make yourself undetectable by such a sense). So his
loving sister does what any sibling would do...hook him up to an armored
wheelchair with a costume that's a clear Kamen Rider riff and remote-control
him into dangerous situations as physical therapy, convinced that if he
encounters a sufficiently strong Murderous Intent it might snap him out of
the coma permanently instead of just for a little while. If you can't find
humor in a guy in a wheelchair spinning around rapidly enough to slice a
monkey-guy into many horizontal chunks, you should probably avoid this.
Like, avoid it a LOT. I cannot stress that enough. While only done in black
and white, there's as much gore and ultraviolence as in the most indulgent
Marshal Law stories. And even more body horror. If you're not bothered by
that sort of thing in your fiction, this is worth checking out.
$13.99/$18.99Cn rated Older Teen 16+ but I think they may be lowballing it.
Chainsaw Man vol 16: Viz Media/Shonen Jump - More of the past friends
and foes of Chainsaw Man, whom Denji doesn't know from Adam ("Why do
strangers keep talking to me?") are coming out of the woodwork. Denji also
gets a new...handler...and is recruited by the Church of Chainsaw Man, but
not to be, you know, Chainsaw Man. It's a very confusing time for Denji,
loads of mixed signals and teasing. Plotwise, it's kinda like that for the
reader as well, as it all builds up to a massive anticlimax, if in an amusing
way. Still, I continue to get the feeling that Fujimoto really doesn't have
a plan for this arc and is just sort of wandering around amusing himself
because the series is successful and worth continuing even if he doesn't have
a plan. Mildly recommended. $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK rated Older Teen
(sexual innuendo, occasional decapitation and dismemberment, but usually not
on the same page)
Delicious in Dungeon vol 11-14: Yen Press - At some point, "Dark Magic"
became "Ancient Magic," dunno if it's a translation choice of the original
writer changed the term used, though. Anyway, the story wraps up in these
volumes, but interestingly ALL of volume 14 is denouement or epilogue, the
Big Bad is defeated in the final pages of volume 13. Of course, there is a
LOT to clean up, so this is fitting, and as a heavily character-driven series
the real plots resolve after the overt plot is taken care of. Overall, I
definitely recommend picking up this series if you're okay with a 14 volume
investment. It's both a sweeping world-changing epic and a series of deeply
personal stories about family both found and born into. $15.00/$19.50 each,
rated Teen LV. (So, yes, that's over $200 to get the whole story, but as I
noted a few months back you can also read it on the LibraryPass app if your
library subscribes.)
Delicious in Dungeon: the Adventurer's Bible: Yen Press - A guidebook to
characters, setting and so forth. I actually bought this in the same order
where I got vol 2-4, but waited to read it until after I finished the whole
story. Turns out that you're spoiler-safe after finishing volume 11, though.
One good aspect of this guidebook is that on top of the usual character
profiles and worldbuilding stuff, there's also original (if somewhat
hastily-drawn) short stories tied to various character entries, sometimes
fleshing out the origins of side characters, sometimes just being a sort of
"deleted scenes" bonus content. Recommended. $18.00/$21.50Cn, rated Teen
LV.
Expected next month: Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 5 had a shelf date of
September 24, but my copy won't arrive until early October. Kaiju No. 8 vol
11, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 4, I'm In Love With the Villainess vol
7. Cat + Gamer vol 6 is technically coming out in the last week of October,
but odds I'll have it in hand before November are low since it's not a book
that my local B&N stocks and online pre-orders have tended to arrive several
days to a week after release date.
Other Trades:
Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, whatever. If it's bigger
than a "floppy" but not Manga, it goes here.
My pre-order of Aaron Alexovich's Shock City got lost in transit, and my
second try ordered more than a week before the end of the month arrived too
late for me to give it a fair read, so it'll be in next month's column. (The
brick and mortar store here never got a copy, so grabbing it from the shelf
and cancelling the online order wasn't an option.)
The Glass Scientists vol 1: Penguin Teen - Okay, this webcomic
collection came out last October, but I chanced across it because the local
B&N had put it face-out and it caught my eye. The setting for this series is
an alternate Victorian England that is a somewhat "friendlier" take on all
the mad scientists and magicians and so forth of the era...League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen characters by way of Narbonic or Girl Genius
attitudes. Like, they're tampering in God's Domain, they're dangerous
lunatics, but they're not bad PEOPLE. Mostly. Dr. Henry Jekyll has founded
the Society for Arcane Sciences as a haven for and PR exercise on behalf of
the more presentable "rogue scientists" who inhabit the era. Creator
S.H. Cotucno follows the not-uncommon headcanon that "Edward Hyde" is only
evil and depraved by the standards of an extremely repressed and sheltered
English gentleman, and is actually still pretty...well, harmless may be too
strong a term, but several actually dangerous people in the story find him
adorable in his attempts to seem dangerous. (That he is sometimes pretty
dangerous is more in the way of carelessness and exuberance than intent.)
While the Society has a cast of dozens, the story wisely focuses on a handful
of characters, with the rest being more of a geek chorus and weathervane for
the influence of the stronger personalities. A newly recruited member, a
country lad who came to the big city to study monsters and ended up a fluffy
werewolf, gets to be the target for most of the necessary exposition. Doctor
Moreau turns up as an example of the sort of mad scientist who makes the rest
look bad, although the real danger to the Society seems to be the arrival of
one of their legendary idols and predecessors in Arcane Scientists (who also
happens to be rabidly socialist or even anarchist and wildly disapproves of
Jekyll's efforts to make the Society "respectable"). And, of course, the
constabulary is not exactly thrilled to have a concentration of "rogue
scientists" in town even if Jekyll vouches for them. Okay, you might say,
another steampunk mad science series, what's the big deal? Why is this
listed as an Item of Note up top? Because both the visual storytelling and
writing work extremely well. While some of the "is it code or is it overt"
story elements may be accidental (see below, they are NOT), they manage to
handle the multiple layers in an entertaining way. It doesn't try to be as
reference-heavy as LoEG, although I'm sure Jess Nevins would be able to place
several characters I just assumed were original to this book. :) Oh, and if
it occasionally looks like Miss Rachel is pulling a Mabel Pines face,
Cotucno did storyboarding for Gravity Falls, so some of that probably rubbed
off. Strongly recommended. $16.99/$23.49Cn (about 300 pages, full color)
The Glass Scientists vol 2: Penguin Teen - The middle of the story fills
in a lot of background, takes some hints and foreshadowing from volume 1 and
expands on them, and sets up the Big Ending that'll come in volume 3. So, I
said above that there was some mix in coding that might have been accidental,
but it's very clear in this volume that it's intentional (even if you don't
read the character notes in back where Cotucno admits to it). Y'see, in the
original Victorian stories that inspired this series, one could argue that at
least some of the tales of abominations of nature and unholy transformations
and monstrous drives were metaphors for LGBTQ+ matters, which were illegal,
unholy, etc. at the time. In volume 1, Cotucno made it clear that at least
some of the "evil" that Jekyll exiled into Hyde was "disaster bisexual," and
that the exiling had not been all that effective. Revelations and heart to
hearts in volume 2 pretty much spell out that not only are there all these
metaphors for sexuality and gender identity, but the cast is also a lot
queerer than is safe for people in Victorian times. (The notes at the end
reveal that when one of the character arcs was planned, Cotucno did not yet
consider themselves trans, but that sometimes these things happen.) This
volume isn't as humorous as the first, although it still has plenty of humor,
because it does spend a lot of time on affairs of the heart and origin
stories which can get a bit heavy. It's still largely a comedy, but it leans
less into the manic farce of the previous volumes, Hyde's efforts at farcical
mania notwithstanding. I'm waffling on the overall rating, I didn't enjoy it
as much as the first volume but it does have to bear a lot more of the plot
on its shoulders and the actual storytelling craft is more polished.
Definitely recommended at least, but I think I'll only really be able to tell
if it's "strongly recommended" in retrospect once the story concludes next
volume...probably in a year given the gap between volumes 1 and 2. (Yeah, I
suppose I could go hit the website TheGlassScientists.com and do an archive
trawl to catch up, but I definitely am out of time for this month's column.)
$17.99/$24.50Cn (same thickness as volume 1, but inflation)
Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures: Iron Circus Comics -
Hey, a Kickstarter fulfillment, as prophesied. The premise as billed is
visions of the future (planned communities, revolutionary inventions, etc)
that failed to come to pass, but the actual content tends to drift afield of
that and into the more general realm of "the future we got kinda sucks
compared to what we hoped it might be." Nor is every story a tale of failure
or tainted success, but sometimes the success is by someone other than the
focal character (e.g. in the very first story, the friend who abandoned the
utopian community that crashed and burned ended up being the guy who designed
the Brooklyn Bridge). The stories range from a handful of pages to the size
of a full floppy, all in color, with the sort of variable quality and tone
you'd expect from a loosely themed anthology. Some are outright "that was
never going to work" inventions presented in a comical tone, several involve
failed predictions of disaster (Y2K, 2012 Mayan Calendar, a religious cult or
two), a few are about things that were just ahead of their time (like the
early attempts at blood transfusions), and a lot are about how capitalism has
taken the promise of the future and made it suck. Still, an interesting if
somewhat defocused read, mostly by people you likely haven't heard of yet
(Ryan North is the most prominent name among the creators, the rest are
distant seconds or lower). Recommended. $30.00 when it becomes available to
non-backers.
Expected next month: Nothing Special vol 2, Cursed Princess Club vol 4,
plus the late-arriving Shock City.
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 #23-25: Marvel - Last time I commented that now the FF's
involvement in the vampire crossover made sense...so of course they're not
allowed to be involved in the followup. In #23, Reed is trying to figure out
Doom's game, in #24 they're too busy to worry about it, and in #25 they end
up trying to get into Latveria and get isekai'ed into a side story. About
all #21-22 accomplished was to have Reed learn (for the Nth time) that Magic
Has Rules And He Shouldn't Dismiss It As Mere Superstition, but I guess North
has so flanderized Reed lately that the lesson needed to be re-learned
on-panel. The main plot in #23-24 is a polemic against how the wealthy will
destroy the world if it means gaining a few more moments of life for
themselves, a sort of "What If Elon Musk Was A Space Octopus And Actually
Could Invent Things Himself?" story. It does lean kinda hard on the "smart
person is so smart they can trivially bypass computer security protocols
written by a race they just met a few hours ago in a language they'd never
seen before" trope, but this time the humans on the receiving end of the
Magic Hacker Powers. In short, the #23-24 story, while it had some fun
moments, suffers badly from "Spirit of the Staircase" problems. #25 has
gotten praise online for being about refusing to accept a choice between two
horrors and instead finding a third way, but the actual plot premise that
sets it up doesn't stand up to a whole lot of thought either, and requires
ignoring a lot of Marvel precedent for time travel. Granted, Marvel time
travel precedent is also self-contradictory, but Reed acts like there's only
one way things could possibly work, unless he Sciences up an alternative. In
short, all three issues were enjoyable reads if you don't think about them
too much, which feels like a bad fit for a main character who's main trait is
thinking about things too much. Mildly recommended. $3.99 each
Vengeance of the Moon Knight #8-9 (of 9): Marvel - The cover of #8 is a
bit misleading, since it really depicts something that happens in #9. Of
course, that it depicts ANYTHING seems unusual for Marvel these days...of the
three Fantastic Four covers I got (admittedly one was a Variant Edition) only
one has anything to do with the story inside, and only vaguely. Anyway, #8
happens during the climax of the vampire crossover, and more organically
shows some of the fallout than the scene in FF #23...such as the fact that
all vampires are now daywalkers, apparently. And they may be more common
than mutants, so I guess "everyone's an Inhuman" redux for the next batch of
new characters? Unless Doom undoes this in the next event, whatever. The
parts that are important to the cast of this book are adequately explained,
it has a big impact on them as people, and MacKay has a good track record of
making use of this sort of thing. One loose end remains, which is to say the
actual main plot of this retroactively limited series: the false Moon Knight.
Dealing with the former Shroud takes up the bulk of #9, along with the moral
dilemma of, "When gods are real and you think their morality bites, how do
you do the right thing without getting smote?" Well, it's Moon Knight, so
the "how" is "violently," but Marc does manage to thread that particular
bird-skull-shaped needle. I've seen focused arcs and miniseries utterly
destroyed by Mandatory Company-Wide Events, but MacKay continues to just fold
that stuff into his plot and roll merrily along. I do feel like the artist
was having trouble with deadlines, because it looks rushed in places and I
had to double-check that the same person was credited for both issues.
Recommended. $4.99 each.
Ultraman x Avengers #1 (of 4): Marvel - Marvel has long born the
emotional scars, at the editorial level, of all the damage done to the
timeline by the licensed comics of the 70s and 80s. Can't refer to Godzilla
by name. The Micronauts stories had to have happened, but without any
Micronauts trademarks (e.g. "The Baron" is only ever seen in vague shadows
now, and never called Karza). The Transformers crash-landed in an alternate
Earth timeline that had a Spider-Man and a Savage Land but was all out of
Marvel superhumans by the time Blackrock founded the Neo-Knights. And so
forth. While there's still been licensed property crossovers since then,
it's generally handled in such a way that Earth-616 needs never refer to the
events of the crossover: it's really more alternate Earths involved, or
there's a Cosmic Reset Button or memory wipe, etc. Thus, when the New
Avengers crossed over with Transformers in the 00s, it was another world
separate from both the regular Marvel and Transformers timelines, with a New
Avengers lineup that just happened to match what was going on in the comics
at the time. Which way does this one do it? Well, I suspect that this
series will stay in continuity with whatever Ultraman comic Marvel puts out
next, but either the Avengers who show up are from yet another alternate
Earth, or I completely missed a big event involving Galactus and they're the
Earth-616 squad but will end up undoing the event from their end and never
refer it again. That, however, is fine by me. I really don't care what
Earth-616 at large does anymore, I prefer the small corners anyway (which is
why I was so irked last month by the vampire stuff spilling over into both of
the regular Marvel books I still get). I do feel like Higgins has been
saving up Good Lines for the Avengers for a while now and is finally getting
to write 'em into a story, there's some very good stuff packed into a few
pages of banter. Additionally, the excuse for the crossover fits very well
with the overall arc of Marvel's Ultraman comics, so there's no reason to hit
the Cosmic Reset from their end. Nicely one-way-walled. Recommended. $4.99
My Adventures With Superman #3-4 (of 6): DC - I've previously commented
on the challenge of telling an interquel story when you're not allowed to
make any lasting changes, or even really have characters grow noticeably.
It's made even more difficult by the fact that season 2 of the cartoon has a
pretty strong arc that builds on just about everything seen in season 1, so
despite the passage of time between seasons there's not a lot of ROOM for a
deuterocanonical story to breathe. As tends to happen, this means the story
is mostly about new characters who will have to be written back out at the
end. A new government-backed antagonist who can see the light of reason
before being reassigned elsewhere so he can't help Superman, or who can
wallow in blind duty and get thoroughly defeated so that they're not around
to bother Superman in S2, for instance. And Amazo gets to be the actual
protagonist, helped through his journey of self-discovery by Superman and the
gang. Is it working? So far...mixed, I'd say. Amazo goes through some
pretty stock "awakened robot" cliches and tropes, and the writers seem to
assume everyone knows the regular Amazo so there's not a lot of explanation
(I think it was covered a little in #2, but it's more show-don't-tell through
visuals and that's not quite good enough IMO, especially since he seems to be
more Crusher Creel than Super Adaptoid here). Mildly recommended. $3.99
each
Gatchaman #2-3: Mad Cave - Galactor #1 theoretically picked up from the
end of the fight in Gatchaman #2, but it...doesn't. Because over there, the
defeat of the sundew monster was Yet Another Failure to explain to Leader X,
while here we see that it was meant only as a distraction from the real plan,
which was a rousing success. Might need to work on line editing, guys. I
suppose that we can take the opening of Galactor #1 to just be a placeholder
for generic "Gatchaman beats yet another mecha monster" scene. But back to
this story. Galactor's plan is actually fairly clever and subtle by the
standards of an organization whose go-to move is to unleash a mecha-kaiju.
It also brings the Devil Stars (basically Jun's counterparts in Galactor,
espionage specialists and mistresses of disguise) into focus as being
potentially more dangerous than any mecha-kaiju, and by the end of #3 we're
seeing that the Blackbirds (Evil Gatchaman team) are also being deployed.
So, kudos for using the deeper bench of Galactor and not just throwing a
monster of the week at the heroes. All of this, however, seems to be mostly
backdrop to what Bunn seems to be setting up as the big conflict: why does
Nambu insist on never activating the backup teams, even while he seems
perfectly willing to let main team members die as Acceptable Losses? I do
have some speculation, but we haven't seen enough of this take on Gatchaman
for me to know how valid it might be. (Mainly, is Nambu still keeping secret
the alien origins of his tech? If so, some of his odd behavior might be in
service of Inscrutable Alien Advice and he can't explain himself to the
others. I presume that they're not changing that part...50+ year old spoiler
warning, both Gatchaman and Galactor are proxies in a war between distant
aliens who can communicate FTL but only travel STL.) The writing is heavy on
melodrama, everyone being Very Insistent about things, extreme in their
emotions unless they're being disturbingly cold and emotionless...pretty
consistent with the source material, in that respect. Recommended. $4.99
each
Vampirella #671: Dynamite - Time for a new arc, potentially weirder than
the last one, and just as tied to a somewhat loose grasp on time. Draculina
has retreated into the Dark World to keep from dying of the poisoned blood
she drank in the last arc, and this time it manifests as what looks like
tight but uninked and uncolored pencils. The premise is that this particular
incarnation is based on some stuff Katie (Draculina's split-timeline self who
timeshares existence with her) did/is doing (time travel and body sharing
make verbs weird) in middle school with a kid who is a child version of the
original publisher of Vampirella comics. Unfortunately, this is only a
temporary escape, because Draculina knows that she's in a world that's both
badly-written and very splattergore with some sort of Ultimate Monster (that
Laios would appreciate) waiting in the wings. The Dark World scenes are set
in 1969, the "Katie does Monsterfic For James Warren" scenes are "55 years
from now (aka 2024), and there's also a short scene bringing Nyx back into
the story as Not Dracula Honest wants her help rescuing his daughter.
Vampirella herself is not in this issue. Buckle in, this feels like another
arc that will be very interesting to read all at once, but kinda frustrating
to read one piece at a time over several months. Provisionally recommended
to wait for the trade. $4.99
Power Rangers Infinity one-shot: Boom! Studios - No, I haven't read any
of the other Boom! series (not even the ones available on LibraryPass), but
the solicitation for this one sounded like it might stand alone and work as
long as the reader had some background in Power Rangers. And for the most
part it does (it helps to know a bit about the villain of the piece,
Poisandra, but the fact she's considered lame and keeps coming back from the
dead anyway is conveyed sufficiently). Interestingly, if you're looking for
a Watsonian explanation for the lack of new Power Rangers shows in the
foreseeable future, Poisandra's plot can be assumed to take a while before it
gets foiled. She has acquired a Plot Device that lets her reboot the Power
Rangers, essentially set up a new season at will. She's looking for a team
she can actually beat, though, and since she's so pathetic she ends up just
re-rolling over and over, preventing the next Power Rangers show from
happening. A handful of the Rangers she created managed to escape being
de-booted, and they've teamed up (as the Power Rangers Infinity) to stop her,
but they're always a step behind. So that's where the story starts, with
Poisandra seeking out the right sort of pathetic Power Rangers fan (at a
convention, of course, where she's assumed to be a cosplayer) to help her
create a team that's weak enough for even Poisandra to beat. (One of the
Infinity team is from the Pride and Prejudice Rangers, and by coincidence the
Sentai and Sensibility TTRPG Kickstarter just shipped.) We do get enough
backstory to see that when Poisandra creates a new team, at least some of
them got to have their stories play out before being wiped, even if the
opening pages make it look like she's gotten to the point where she wipes 'em
as fast as she can create 'em. Does any of this take place in the show or
existing comics continuity? Almost definitely not! The framing sequence is
in a world where Power Rangers are strictly fictional, but it's not our world
since the comic publisher the protagonist wants to work for is Highland
Studios rather than Boom! Studios. Yeah, the whole thing is pretty cheesy
and goes heavy on the cheap sentiment, but isn't that the true spirit of the
Power Rangers? Recommended. $7.99
Expected next time I review floppies (since there might not be enough to
ship again until November): Definitely Gatchaman Galactor #2 (of 4), My
Adventures With Superman #5, Ultraman x Avengers #2 (as those already shipped
by the first week of October), probably Fantastic Four #26, Gatchaman #4,
Gatchaman Galactor #2, Vampirella #672. Charm City #4 is solicited for
October, but #3 was solicited for September and there's no sign of it,
so....
Dave Van Domelen, "Now he probably thinks I'm some sort of LOONEY."
"You ARE some sort of looney." "I don't want HIM to know that!" - Miss
Rachel and Dr. Jekyll, The Glass Scientists vol 1
Dave's Comics and Manga Capsules for September 2024