Dave's Comicbook Capsules for December 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
Ended the year on a high note, two Strongly Recommended on Dec 29.

Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Love and
Capes: Home for the Holidays, Moon Knight #18

In this installment: Doom Patrol Season 3, Peacemaker Season 1,
Adventure Finders Book 3 Chapter 12, D&D Dungeon Club: Roll Call, Love and
Capes: Home for the Holidays, Fantastic Four #2, Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings
#6 (of 6), Moon Knight #18, Monkey Prince #9 (of 12), Blue Flame #10 (of 10),
Gargoyles #1, My Little Pony #7, My Little Pony Classics Reimagined #2,
Transformers Shattered Glass II #5 (of 5).

Note, next month some of my books will be shifted to orders at a new
store and arrive in February, but I'll still have enough weekly pickup books
to keep up the usual format for floppies.


"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.

Doom Patrol Season 3: DC/WB - The pacing is a little weird, because
COVID interrupted shooting and what ended up as S3E1 was originally going to
be the S2 finale, wrapping up a lot of the character arcs and setting up the
next set of dysfunctions. They were able to move a few things up so that the
actual final episode of S2 still felt sufficiently foreshadowy of the next
arc, at least. This season is the Sisterhood of Dada, in which the
Brotherhood of Dada is tweaked to free it from Mr. Nobody (who was the S1
baddie), but every character in it is still based at least somewhat on a BoD
character even if they're never given the codenames. A few of the comics
bits are somewhat perfunctory and disposed of quickly, as if the writers
changed their minds during the gap and decided to just power through. Also,
while it's more or less justified later on, I found Cliff's self-destruction
arc to be just annoying, I ended up muting whenever he was on screen during
several episodes. So...a mixed bag. Some good stuff, but also a lot of
stuff that felt perfunctory. It managed to leave some danglers in case
season 4 happened (which it miraculously DID, given DC/HBO's Summer of Long
Knives...the season started this month), but it's one of those "and then they
lived weirdly ever after" things rather than the sort of cliffhanger that'd
be really annoying in the event of cancellation. Mildly recommended. Price
varies by store.

Peacemaker Season 1: DC/WB - So, this series spinning out of The Suicide
Squad has about as much swearing as Doom Patrol, maybe a little more nudity
(by time, there's some that could arguably called more extreme), and a much
lower regard for the sanctity of life. Back in The Suicide Squad, one of the
early gags was how Bloodsport and Peacemaker had virtually identical origins,
but by the end of the movie Bloodsport showed he could break out of his
conditioning and Peacemaker couldn't. The emotional plotline of this season
explores the ways in which Peacemaker's origin was different, and also
provides him a supporting cast that lets him explore the ways in which
"psycho killer who calls himself a hero" can be different beyond the simple
heel/face turns. Hardened government operatives, actual amoral psychos, and
people who are definitely better than Peacemaker but stuck in a raw deal let
Peacemaker remain consistent with his portrayal in The Suicide Squad while
also being a little more sympathetic and a credible protagonist. Not a
likeable protagonist, but not 100% asshole either. Maybe 85%, as one of the
supporting cast grudgingly admits (although their adjective is rather
stronger than asshole). Also, John Cena actually plays the piano in one
scene, I did not see that coming. Keeping in mind that you need a high
tolerance for bloodshed, cussin, and amoral protagonists, it's pretty well
done. Recommended with lots of warning labels. Price varies by format or
whether you're actually still paying for HBO Max.


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.

Adventure Finders Book 3 Chapter 12: Patreon.com - While we still don't
get back to the Big Fight, some of the other plot threads are starting to
weave back together as Clari takes center stage again in a forlorn hope
against the ruler of the underground prison. The theme of "Allies are the
real power" is hammered home with vigor. Recommended. $2/month on Patreon.


Trades:

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

D&D Dungeon Club: Roll Call: Harper Alley - I was just browsing the
manga/GN shelves at Walmart when I saw this and something made me take a
closer look...at which point I saw the writer credit: Molly Knox Ostertag.
While I'm not actually that interested in a story of middle school kids
playing D&D as a general thing, Ostertag is one of those writers I'll follow
just about anywhere at least once per property. Amusingly, this is the
absolute least magical/fantastic story by Ostertag that I've read, in that
the D&D stuff is just showing what goes on in the RPG being played by the
characters, with the "real world" of the story being solidly real. No witch
boys or selkies or superheroes. And yeah, the middle school angst did wear
on me a bit. Without going into Personal Details, let's just say I lived
through similar circumstances but the protagonist's reaction didn't resonate
with me. Anyway, I stuck it out, and it was a decent story overall, but I'm
not sure I'll pick up any sequels that come out. Mildly recommended.
$19.99/$24.99Cn (but I paid $14.98 at Walmart)

Love and Capes: Home for the Holidays: Maerkle Press - The latest
direct-from-Kickstarter installment of "Not quite the DCU, but perhaps a
kinder version" in which the heroes and supporting cast have emerged from
COVID and are now dealing with both Christmas and New Year's Eve with family
and friends. For those not familiar with Love and Capes, it's one of those
comics where the actual superhero battle stuff is mostly off-screen or dealt
with in a few pages, and the focus is on the personal lives and friendships
(kinda like how Invincible was for a while after the initial arc and before
getting caught up in the gorefests and interplanetary drama). This is
technically a collection of a Patreon-delivered webcomic, although during
final assembly Zahler realized that there were a few scenes that needed
adding, and the last of those new pages got delivered to the Patreon readers
on December 29, the same day my physical copy arrived. :) If you'd like a
story about how Superman and Batman are friends and they have family issues
to deal with but it's not CW-style teen angst, you'll want to pick up as many
of the L&C collections as you can find, and then this one. Strongly
recommended. $9.99 cover price (The Kickstarter version also came with a
clever one-page fold-up comic that's like an Al Jaffee piece dialed up to
11. Well, 8, because that's how many thin panels there are when you unfold
the whole thing.)

I almost picked up "Little Witches" when I saw it on the shelf, but I
figured I should finish one weird Little Women adaptation before starting
another. (It has nothing to do with Little Witch Academia, and from skimming
it seems to go off the rails about as much as Little Fillies does, just in
different directions.) Maybe I'll get it next month.


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 #2: Marvel - Now a focus on Reed and Sue in another small
town with weird stuff happening. I feel that North is flanderizing Reed a
little, the first page is wince-worthy in that regard, but after things get
rolling he's a bit more humanized. Thematically, the story is a nice compare
and contrast with #1, in that a small town mystery is encountered,
investigated, and solved, but the solution goes in a different direction.
Recommended. $3.99

Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings #6 (of 6): Marvel - Hm, looks like the
Annual got renamed as Shang-Chi Master of the Ten Rings, so I might be
getting two copies of this due to having put the "new series" on my pull at
the new store. Oh well. I do wonder if Yang was planning on another dozen
issues and had to suddenly wrap everything up in six issues and an annual,
because this is something of a letdown, pulling off a lot of masks in order
to set up the finale next month (next week, a bit of a compression on the
schedule there). Mildly recommended. $3.99

Moon Knight #18: Marvel - Yeah, this is a big payoff issue as Moon
Knight and Tigra take on a ballroom full of powerful vampires amid many
quotable lines. Like, he doesn't actually call Dracula a nerd, but only
because Dracula himself isn't present. But it's not all vampire slaying and
combat quips, Soldier gets a good focus moment as well (see the pull quote at
the bottom). Strongly recommended. $3.99

Monkey Prince #9 (of 12): DC - Yang breaks up the formula quite a bit
here. It starts like the previous two arcs, with the family moving to
another city, mom and dad going to work for another supervillain...but then
it goes sideways and the villain they were minioning for was a red herring.
More of Marcus's family tree comes to light, and the odds of him making it
through high school as a normal kid were probably zero anyway. Recommended.
$3.99

The Blue Flame #10 (of 10): Vault Comics - Welp, Cantwell doubles down
on the ambiguity, regarding which Blue Flame is the real one. Is the whole
world at stake, or just one man's life and family? There's a slight
implication of that answer here, but it's left deliberately ambiguous...with
a message of "It doesn't matter if it's the whole world or just a few people,
you have to care." High degree of difficulty on that, and I'm not convinced
that Cantwell pulled it off (or even that he conveyed to the reader what he
was trying to pull off), but at least there wasn't a horribly cop-out in
either direction. The collected trade is already solicited, and it might be
a better read all at once, but if you're interested in a superhero story that
delves into questions of identity without simply saying, "Oh, he's actually
delusional," you might find this worth the effort. Mildly recommended.
$3.99

Gargoyles #1: Dynamite - There's not a whole lot of story this issue,
because it has a LOT of heavy lifting to do just introducing the cast. It
doesn't just include all the characters who showed up in the cartoon (which
was a lot by the end), it also apparently uses the previous comics run that I
gave up on after an arc or two. I feel that this would have been better
served with a Handbook style book with an 8 page story wrapping around the
handbook entries, because that's about how much story there was, and the
character introduction was pretty shallow. I suppose if they still did that,
this would be a #0 issue, next issue (in a few months) is the real start of
things. Mildly recommended. $3.99

My Little Pony #7: IDW - Filler. Aggressive filler. It reads almost
like an "I Can Read" book in terms of having almost no plot stakes, just a
walk through a premise to give each main character a short scene that lays
out one personality trait. I mean, the vocabulary level is above that of the
I Can Read books, but the story feels like it came from one of those. It's a
pity that this is the first A-cover that fan artist PonyBerzerker (Konrad
Kachel) got. Neutral. $3.99

My Little Pony Classics Reimagined #2: IDW - Well, I haven't read the
book, but Pinkie has. The tone set in #1 continues, although this time
Discord argues with the editorial captions, and there's a one page Watchmen
homage for some reason or other. I suspect that Brown is trying to stay as
close to the spirit of the original book as possible while also straying as
far from the letter of it as she can get away with (and it's not like there's
a licensor for Little Women to irk). Recommended. $3.99

Transformers Shattered Glass II #5 (of 5): IDW - And the IDW era of
Transformers comes to an end, on a somewhat hopeful note that even in a
dystopian Mirror Universe the good guys can win...or at least stave off
destruction a little. I wonder if they'd originally planned Shattered Glass
as a 3 series arc, because there's a lot of plot threads whipping together as
Soundwave narrates stuff. There's also a G1-worthy death count, which I
suppose provides some level of closure in the sense that you can't have a
dangling plot thread if all the antagonists connected to it are dead. Mildly
recommended. $3.99


Dave Van Domelen, "It's kind of funny, Reese. I was never good at
ANYTHING. Never any good at school, never could find a job I CLICKED with.
SQUARE PEG in a ROUND HOLE world. Hydra LOVES guys like that. Because Hydra
is good at ONE thing: telling guys like me that it's not their FAULT. That
it's the WORLD'S fault that they're so angry." - Soldier, Moon Knight #18