Dave's Comicbook Capsules for June 2022

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Comicbook Capsules Et Cetera
Intermittent 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
Slowly catching up on missing books.

Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Spy x Family

In this installment: Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Kaiju
No. 8 vol 2, Spy x Family vol 1-7, Dork Tower: the Tao of Igor, Monkey Prince
#5 (of 12), Black Adam #1 (of 12), Moon Knight #12, Final Faction #1,
Draculina #4, Norse Mythology III #5 (of 6), Arrowsmith Behind Enemy Lines #6
(of 6), My Little Pony #2, Transformers: Last Bot Standing #2 (of 4),
Transformers Beast Wars #16-17 (of 17), Transformers War's End #4 (of 4)
Transformers: Fate of Cybertron.

Current Wait List (books either Diamond didn't ship or my store failed
to order): Moon Knight #11, Spectreman Heroes #1 (of 5), Blue Flame #8 (of
10), Vampirella/Dracula Unholy #6 (of 6).


"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.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness: Marvel - This is your
basic Power Corrupts story, but unfortunately it doesn't just show doomed
alternate universes (like What If? did for a Dr. Strange alternate), it
somewhat misogynistically uses the main MCU version of a character as the
villain who can only be redeemed through self-sacrifice. Structurally, it
worked pretty well, and if you only pay attention to Dr. Strange's own
personal story, it's pretty good. But it's marred pretty badly by the choice
of villain. (It could have been an alternate universe version of that
character and the story would hardly have needed altering at all...still
would have been pretty bad in its choices, but at least it wouldn't have
trashed the "real" version. A special effects feast, wrapped around a
problematic core. It's like a superbly prepared steak with a bit of rot in
it. If you miss the rot (maybe one bite tastes a little funny) it's
enjoyable, but on hearing the recall you might be a bit uncomfortable.

Enjoying Ms. Marvel, as usual will review once the season ends.


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.

Nothing this month. Adventure Finders is on hiatus, and Comixology is
increasingly useless. Amazon claims they'll fix it, but somehow I doubt
that.


Trades:

Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, pocket manga, whatever.
If it's bigger than a "floppy" it goes here.

Kaiju No. 8 vol 2: Viz/Shonen Jump - Okay, so the writer kinda backed
off avoiding the trope I thought had been deliberately dodged, or rather
they're leaning into a related trope. Also, apparently kaiju have been a
thing for at least a thousand years in this setting and somehow human
civilization still turned out about the same? I mean, yeah, it's a goofy
giant monster series, but it goes for serious stuff often enough that
suspension of disbelief starts to wobble. Still enjoyable enough I plan to
get the next couple of volumes, but the writer may be a bit too much of a
"pantser" rather than a plotter. Recommended but don't think too hard.
$9.99/$12.99Cn/#7.99UK

Spy x Family vol 1-7: Viz/Shonen Jump - So, this is another one of those
"found out about it via Tumblr posts," because the anime adaptation has been
getting turned into GIFsets lately. (The anime is currently only subtitled,
and on streaming services I don't get anyway.) On a whim I picked up vol 6
when I saw it on the shelf at Walmart, and it was pretty easy to follow
without having read the previous five volumes, always a good sign. So I
spent the next few weeks scavenging up the remaining volumes (3 and 4 haven't
gotten second printings yet and were a bit harder to locate). Unlike Kaiju
No. 8, the setting and tone are definitely wacky enough to excuse the gaping
holes in the setting. It's a "deadly serious characters in a not very
serious if still kinda deadly setting" thing, which can be hard to make work,
but Tatsuya Endo manages it pretty well. Short premise: in a world that's
basically 60s/70s spy movies and TV with the names (barely, in some cases)
changed, Twilight is the super-spy agent of Westalia, who has a deep cover
mission to get close to a major figure in the Ostanian government who may be
trying to restart The War. Taking on the identity of psychologist Loid
Forger (which raises NO eyebrows), he moves to Berlint (like I said, barely)
and sets out to create the identity of a father whose kid will rise to levels
of academic success at a private academy, which is the only place his target
is known to ever socialize. So far, it seems almost reasonable. But the
orphan he picks to play his daughter is (unknown to him) a telepath. And
when he needs a wife to finish the cover, the unassuming office worker Yor
Briar he asks to do so (she needs a fake boyfriend to set her brother's mind
at ease, so it's kinda a transactional thing) is (unknown to him) the
ultra-deadly Black Widow style assassin the Thorn Princess. Her brother Yuri
(unknown to Yor, but Loid figures it out) is a rising star in the Stasi-like
secret police. (Yuri is very protective of Yor and is just looking for an
excuse to arrest Loid, but has no idea Loid is really...you get the idea.)
During a later mission (a recent spy sweep has left the West short on assets
in Berlint, so Twilight does a lot of side missions) they acquire a family
dog, who is (unknown to Loid and Yor) precognitive. Oh, and the telepathic
daughter Anya? She knows ALL THE THINGS. But since she's like six years old
and raised in an orphanage, she doesn't understand much of it. She just
thinks it's so cool that dad is a spy like Bond-man on TV, and that mom's an
assassin (although she's a little less thrilled with how casually murdery
mom's thoughts are). Anyway, Loid/Twilight has Batman levels of implausible
competence at everything, but he's stuck with a nigh-impossible mission and
has no idea how deep of a mess he's gotten himself into. You can probably
pick up just about any volume and enjoy it without the others. Strongly
recommended. $9.99/$12.99Cn/#7.99UK

Dork Tower: the Tao of Igor: Dork Storm Press - This Kickstarted volume
(technically volume 10 of the collected Dork Tower) is basically the finale
of the old floppy series that ended unceremoniously a few years ago. And
what with all of Kovalic's other projects, it took...a while...to finish (the
Kickstarter was in October 2018). Where the comic left off, the annual
MudCon organizing duties had landed in the lap of Igor, the player most
likely to grab the obviously trapped or cursed item, the poster boy for "act
first, think never." (He's based on a real person, but very much changed
over the course of writing.) The titular Tao of Igor is the Way of the Empty
Mind. VERY empty. Just drift through life and things will work out. Or
not. Igor basically Igors his way into a successful convention, and other
regular (and some irregular) cast members get their own arcs along the way,
with things generally working out pretty well for almost everyone, despite
Igor. And because of Igor. It's not the destination, it's the wacky
journey. Recommended. $25.99 (available on the Dork Storm Press store now,
or at least soon)


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.)

Monkey Prince #5 (of 12): DC - Arc two drops Monkey Prince off the deep
end (literally and figuratively) into Aquaman's turf (surf?), with his
parents predictably henching for Black Manta. However, the immediate threat
is another group I've never seen before, but I guess they're probably from
Aquaman's books since I stopped following him (mumble) years ago. Marcus is
keeping up at least some Gotham connections, which is good, because I was
worried that this Journey to the Wherever would leave him utterly without
roots. His new sparring partner isn't as interesting as Damian Wayne, but
who is? Recommended. $3.99

Black Adam #1 (of 12): DC - Priest returns to DC with a series that at
least is expected to end at 12. This is not a tie-in to the movie, it's more
of a "take advantage of movie buzz to sell some comics," in the way that
Priest's USAgent comic sort of coat-tailed on Falcon & the Winter Soldier.
So, the basic premise here is that Teth-Adam is a T'Challa who cares very
little what you think (for pretty much any value of "you"), and is more bored
than amused by the U.S.A.'s foreign policy vis-a-vis Khandaq. So,
well-informed and experienced political leader who could also coincidentally
kill everyone in the room if he felt like it, but he doesn't need the hassle.
However, he's also a bit short-sighted or maybe just arrogant in some
important ways...T'Challa would never go after Thanos just to see what he
could learn, but Black Adam does the DCU's version of that. And it goes
badly for him. So this issue sets up the new status quo (at least for the
duration of the maxiseries), how Black Adam deals with the Problems he got
himself into. Similar tone to Priest's Black Panther in many ways, but
without the tacit assumption that the protagonist was basically a good guy
who just acts scary as a tactic. Black Adam really is scary. I suspect that
Priest's handling could make Black Adam a figure on the level of Doctor Doom,
so long as editorial decides to stick with the outcomes and not reset him
next year for some event. Recommended. $3.99

Moon Knight #12: Marvel - Well, I still don't have a hardcopy of #11,
but I caught up via Other Means. The endgame with Zodiac, whose stated goal
is to turn Marc into a nihilistic spree killer by ripping away everything
that anchors him to humanity. In fact, Zodiac's happy if he can turn anyone
into a psychokiller, even if it means being their first victim. He's kinda a
militant nihilist...not only does he lack a moral core, he finds it offensive
that anyone else does. Did he think Moon Knight's checkered past would make
him an easy mark, or a hard target since Marc has always pulled back from the
edge? Can we even trust anything he says? Probably not. Anyway, a
satisfying end to the arc, and I can really see how the last page or two was
set up so that in the event of cancellation everything could have been
wrapped up neatly. But there's going to be a #13, so MacKay had a new twist
to pull out on the last page that doesn't invalidate the resolution but does
offer new pathways. Recommended. $3.99

Final Faction #1: Greenbrier/Dollar Tree - Okay, so Final Faction has
been boggling people since it launched last year. Dollar Tree. Has an
action figure line. With a cartoon. And now a comic? The toys are
surprisingly good, the cartoon is deliberately 90s-cheesy and at least
accomplishes that. The comic doesn't quite make it up to the level of the
toy line, but it's still impressive that they put it out for $1.25. It's
written by Toby Osborne and clearly inspired by pack-in comics from the 80s
and 90s, if done at full length rather than being 4-8 pages. GIJoe pastiche
group comes out of retirement to fight an alien threat whose mothership turns
out to have been our Moon all along. The art is by Chris Marrinan, not using
the Erik Larsen imitation style he favored when working for Marvel in the
90s, but rather the more retro-70s style he used on the Champions-line comics
before they split from the game and turned into libertarian lolicon. The
cover is pretty good, a complete piece, but most of the interior pages look
like he hacked out the entire book over a weekend and then someone "inked"
his pencils by messing with contrast settings on scans. Colorist Mimi Simon
does a decent job of trying to salvage the result, with the sort of bold and
garish stuff that was common in the 80s and 90s as colorists slowly adapted
to the new printing quality that no longer washed things out. In short, the
whole thing aims for toyetic cheese, and the quality isn't very good even by
those standards, but what do you expect for the price? Worth grabbing for
the badness if you have a Dollar Tree conveniently nearby and they carry any
(it's very hit-or-miss). $1.25

Draculina #4: Dynamite - A reality-warper has arrived in the story, as
if reality wasn't already warped enough. It's uncertain whether the effects
on Katie were intentional as well, or just "fallout" from Hesiod toying with
Draculina, but it's certainly a Plot Complication. Not really sure how this
plays with the rules established in #1-3, but it's entirely possible that
those rules were misunderstood or simply lied about. I suspect this is gonna
be one of those books that needs to be read in its entirety in one setting,
though. Mildly recommended. $3.99

Norse Mythology III #5 (of 6): Dark Horse - So, Loki finishes getting
his comeuppance, and then fast-forwards to Ragnarok. In fact, binding Loki
to the stone to get venom dripped in his face is treated as the last
interesting thing the gods do before fading from the world for a long age,
awakened only to fight their final battle. This makes sense in a cosmology
that assumes that there is nothing after Ragnarok (as opposed to Snorri
Sturlson's tacked-on faux-Christian rebirth), so there has to be time for
mundane history to pass. I suppose there still could be a Norse Mythology IV
if there's any unadapted Gaiman interpretations, but the three volumes so far
have pretty much hit all the stories that I remembered from my childhood
interest in Norse myth. A few gore and nudity warnings this time, Loki's
imprisonment is in no way meant to be easy to stomach. Recommended. $3.99

Arrowsmith Behind Enemy Lines #6 (of 6): Image - Welp, this is really #6
of 12, the story's being split into two volumes (convenient, given that
Pacheco has had some medical issues and needs time off now). So the
front-loaded narration dominates this volume, maybe the next volume will
spend less time lecturing? It really feels like this entire series could be
have been one issue and then a few pages of prose. Mildly recommended.
$3.99

My Little Pony #2: IDW - Okay, at least in the comics, G5 is very
solidly the future of G4. No guarantee that the cartoons will share this
story or if this is instead a repeat of the "Lasso the Moon and go find the
aliens that turned Luna into Nightmare Moon" story from the first arc of the
G4 comic. Deuterocanonical, in other words. There's a reasonably coherent
handwave for why things are different (e.g. "restoring" magic in the cartoon
gave Earth Ponies magic that they never had in G4, but Magic Is Different
Because Plot Device). Unfortunately, while it all makes narrative sense, I
really dislike sequels that depend on blowing up a happy ending. At BEST,
this storyline sets up G5 as a What If? alternate universe with the "real" G4
still chugging along happily in harmony. G5 is just too different to be the
future of G4 without some serious "and then while we weren't watching, the
heroes failed and the world ended" stuff. Neutral. $3.99

Transformers: Last Bot Standing #2 (of 4): IDW - Wow. Was this
something Roche pitched years ago and was told "Hell no, that'll piss off
Hasbro!" And now that the license is going away anyway, they're letting him
indulge? While the rabid Moon (BWII) on the cover is symbolic rather than
literal, the schlock horror "twists" are on full display, because, horror of
horrors, the surviving Cybertronians have figured out how to get energy by
eating people. Like, not just organic life, they specifically go after
sapients. Not really explained, and Moon clearly finds it abhorrent,
but...schlock. IDW determined to go out on a low note, I guess. (The only
Transformers comic they've got that'll come out after this series ends is the
Shattered Glass II series, which is more a toy pack-in anyway.) I guess I'll
ride this turkey down for a landing on the good people of Cincinnati, but
I'll complain the whole time. Avoid. $5.99

Transformers: Beast Wars #16-17 (of 17): IDW - Yes, the license is going
away, so all the ongoing plots need to wrap up quickly. Uneasy alliance
between Maximals and Predacons to fight the Vok, lots of fighting that
doesn't accomplish anything since they can't hurt the intangible Vok behind
it all, and then Plot Device time. Even the characters complain about how
plot-devicey it is. They probably should've just cancelled at #12 rather
than trying to cram what I guess was another 24 or so issues into five.
Neutral. $3.99 each.

Transformers War's End #4 (of 4): IDW - Well, A war's end. There's
still a one-shot to wrap up the other wars (see next review). As with the
other IDW2 TF titles, it just sort of rushes through checking off the boxes
and showing some set pieces the creators wanted to do. There's a lot of
"Aha! Plot device! And wait, it was countered," stuff. It's hard to feel a
sense of threat when they jump from idea to idea without really getting to
develop any of them. A few of the character arcs (like Cyclonus's and
Landmine's) get just enough pagecount to feel like they're paying off, but
overall this issue feels like a Marvel Saga-style summary of what would have
been a dozen or more issues. In other words, typical of this year's IDW
Transformers comics. $5.99 (30 pages and a lot of house ads)

Transformers Fate of Cybertron: IDW - Okay, NOW the war's over. Rather
abruptly and unsatisfyingly, but it was starting to feel like a decade-long
epic got cut in half when the license was lost...as if halfway through the
Two Towers Frodo meets a small rebel Orc band that smuggles them to Mount
Doom in a few chapters. The art is split among five artists, a few of whom
were pretty clearly just given Big Combat Splash Pages to do, with the rest
of the pages doing the least possible to get between the splash pages. It's
not as bad as the Final Faction art, but some pages are pretty
rushed-looking, and the final resolution is just...petering out. So that's
the IDW second Transformers continuity...started unreasonably slowly, then
collapsed in a pile of bullet points, never really hitting GOOD pacing for
any extended period. Neutral. $7.99 (38 pages of story, but about the same
number of actual pages as War's End #4)


Dave Van Domelen, "What, because it would 'make me as bad as him' or
something?" "No. It would make you as bad as ME." - Reese and Moon Knight,
Moon Knight #12