RANT: Dave's Capsules for April 22, 2012

[Dave Van Domelen]

Dave's Unspoilt Capsules and Awards
Intermittent Picks and Pans, plus Awards of Dubious Merit

Standard Disclaimers: Please set appropriate followups. Recommendation does
not factor in price. Not all books will have arrived in your area this week.
An archive can be found on my homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants
Got a job interview at TAMU-Galveston early next month, woot.

Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing really
stood out.


"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 time around. I will briefly note that I'm enjoying
Ultimate Spider-Man, but can see where numerous elements of it would grate
horribly on some people.


Digital Content:

Unless I find a really compelling reason to do so, I won't be turning
this into a webcomic review column. Rather, stuff in this section will be
full books available for reading online or for download, usually for pay. I
will often be reading these things on my iPod if it's at all possible.

Atomic Robo presents Real Science Adventures #1: Red5 Comics - This is
the sort of anthology series you really only get in a medium like comics.
Wegener writes all the stories, but different people draw them (Clevinger is
not one of them). It's a mix of done in one vignettes and continuing
serials, and while the cover doesn't indicate if this is a miniseries or an
ongoing, the two serial stories are listed as part 1 of 6, so the series will
last at least six issues. :)
To Kill A Sparrow is the first serial, drawn by Ryan Cody. Set in WWII,
it stars Sparrow and another female allied agent. This part is pretty much
your standard action movie pre-credits action sequence, probably not tied
directly to the main storyline. A decent start.
The Revenge of Dr. Dinosaur is a vignette drawn by Yuko Oda, and it's
chronologically third of the Doc Dino stories. Much of it is done in
montage style, as Dr. Dinosaur assembles the components needed to wreak his
horrible yet subtle revenge on Robo. Quite excellent shaggy raptor story.
City of Skulls (Chris Houghton) is thematicaly the same as Ghost of
Station X, but quieter and simpler, showing in only a few pages one of the
harder parts of Robo's job.
Leaping Metal Dragon drawn by John Broglia is the other serial story, in
which Robo learns martial arts from Bruce Lee. It's also a prelude chapter,
with Lee only appearing at the end, and it's a bit weaker than To Kill A
Sparrow.
Finally, Joshua Ross draws Rocket Science Is A Two-Edged Sword, a
grayscaled tale from the 1950s in which Robo fights a technowizard aboard a
rocket ship that's headed for a city. About the middle of the pack for this
issue.
Recommended. $2.75 cover price, $1.99 at ComiXology.

Arsenic Lullaby Pulp Edition No. Zero: Arsenic Lullaby Publishing -
Ironically, what was supposed to make this version of Arsenic Lullaby stand
out was the larged page size and "pulp"-ish physical format...and I got it as
an ebook. The ComiXology conversion is a little rough in places, with some
panels that really should get the "full size, then pan across as you page-
advance" treatment only existing as single very wide panes, but Paszkiewicz's
lettering style makes most panels pretty readable even if they're a little
small on the screen. The cover choice is good, because the "star" of this
issue is the conflict between Tex Buckaroo (not his real name) and Issitoq
(giant eyeball god) as they seek to guide a young boy through the
vicissitudes of life as guardian spirits. In the girls' bathroom, where the
boy is hiding from bullies. Oh, and Issitoq is an Iniut god, and Tex is a
pretty horrible racist *and* embodiment of the 1950s idea of cowboys? Yeah.
So, there's a fight scene. Despite his unpleasant personality aspects, Tex
gives some pretty good practical advice (it's "good" in the "will keep the
kid from being beaten up" sense, not in any moral/ethical sense), but things
go downhill pretty fast once Tex and Issitoq come to blows. There's other
shorts in here, that's pretty much the format of Arsenic Lullaby, but most
are just long enough to set up the premise. Recommended, but pretty
offensive in general. 99cents at ComiXology.

Arsenic Lullaby Pulp Edition Omega Parts 1 and 2: Arsenic Lullaby
Publishing - The physical Pulp Edition in this case is about 40 pages, so the
ebook is split into two parts (17 and 24 pages, with the first part being the
long Voodoo Joe story and the second being all the short subjects). I was a
little worried that No. Zero would just be excerpts from these, but there's
no intersection of sets. The same format issues mentioned above apply here,
but for something intended for A4-sized paper it does pretty well on an iPod
screen.
In a regular comic, this big "all of Voodoo Joe's enemies gang up on
him" story would probably have some sort of effect on him. This is Arsenic
Lullaby, though, so...not so much. I suppose it has an effect on the
enemies, and on Joe's erstwhile ally Chad. And by "effect" I mean "tire
iron".
The second part has all the shorter stuff, including a longer piece with
the cow alien recurring characters. While their reason for not wanting to
invade Earth is a bit implausible (good luck finding a planet without any
spin, especially if you want it to be able to support life), but it's not
like these cow aliens have ever been shown to be terribly intelligent.
If you're not familiar with the ongoing stuff, you might want to skip
Part 1 for now, since it presumes a lot of knowledge to make its payoff (or
lack of payoff) work. But Part 2 is pretty solid material and more
accessible to newcomers (although you kinda have to take Baron Von Donut's
existence as read). As with No. Zero, recommended but offensive. 99 cents
each at ComiXology.


Trades:

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

None this time.

Floppies:

If I actually pick up some monthly issues, they'll go here. Given my
reluctance to put money in Diamond's hands, though, these would likely only
be review copies or stuff found in oddball places. And no, I don't have any
particular disdain for the monthlies, but they *are* floppy, yes? And like
floppy disks they may be a doomed format.

Young Justice #14: DC - Huh, guess Hastings is still ordering this, just
got it late this time. Aqualad brings Superboy and Miss Martian along with
him to Atlantis, and gets a lot more character background and development.
Kaldur does seem to get the short shrift in the cartoon, something the comic
writers work to correct. A lot of aquatic characters get versions introduced
here as schoolmates of Aqualad (including King Shark), and there's a fairly
transparent mystery (well, transparent for anyone with any Aquaman lore
knowledge...if Orm comes in screen in act one, he'll be Ocean Master by act
three, count on it, regardless of continuity). In the backup plot, Red
Tornado's siblings are being brought together, a plot point that won't make
any sense if you haven't seen the cartoon, and will feel needlessly
mysterious if you have. Recommended. $2.99

Young Justice #15: DC - Well, when you review about once a month and get
an issue late, this tends to happen. :) The Tornado sibs get a page of plot
this time too, but it's mostly about wrapping up the Ocean Master story.
"Wrapping up" may be a bit strong, though...the specific Sinister Plot is
foiled, but there's so many danglers that it's obviously meant to be a teaser
for the full story. I'm curious whether Ocean Master will be a major threat
in the next season of Young Justice, or if they decided to make him a Big Bad
that's specific to the comic? He's been on screen in the cartoon, just never
with a significant role. Generally a good issue, although I do have one
quibble: if you're going to use Greek characters in speech bubbles, it's only
polite to readers to provide some sort of footnotes or endnotes translating
them. (I'm also not entirely sure they were using the Greek correctly, some
of the gammas seem to be meant to be hard c sounds.) Recommended. $2.99

Marvel Universe Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes #1: Marvel - The
Marvel Adventures line has been hung up, as Marvel seems to have given up on
having a stand-alone all-ages line, replacing it with tie-ins for their
Disney XD shows. Written by Christopher Yost, so expect it to have the feel
of the cartoon. Chris Jones keeps to the animated style, unlike the backup
stories in the the previous cartoon tie-in miniseries. The lead story
involves the Avengers fighting a Mandarin-controlled Fin Fang Foom. Then
there's a short Fury Files on Iron Fist (Ultimate Spider-Man). The issue
wraps up with Assembly Line, a summary of the first season written by Yost
and drawn by DeKraker (although his Maria Hill isn't quite on-model).
Recommended. $2.99

Gold Digger v3 #135: Antarctic Press - Oops, if I'd waited a few days to
make my latest AP order, I could have taken advantage of their Tax Day Sale.
Ah well. This issue wraps up the big Dynasty Resurgence arc, but immediately
relegates it to secondary status as merely a herald of the REAL threat. Lots
of big splash-page art and overwrought dialogue (although the Amarans are the
worst offenders there). Recommended. $3.99

Gold Digger v3 #136-137: Antarctic Press - A two-part more or less
self-contained story involving the sorts of things that can happen when your
family gets a little too involved in time travel. Unfortunately, it looks
like the covers might have been scrambled by mistake, as the cover for #136
would really work better on #137.
Probably the biggest weakness of these issues is that it highlights
Perry's tendency to jump between plots like a kid with attention span
issues. Sure, there's a wrapup for #135 early on, but then it's off to an
entirely different Big Cosmic Plot which may or may not tie into the thing
the Dynasty was worried about. Because of the resulting plot dump, the story
felt kinda thin...I think it would've been stronger if Perry left out the
details of the interloper's true story and just left it as a mystery for the
future. The important plot point was simply that the interloper was related
to someone in the present, and we didn't need to know the details for that to
shake things up. Mildly recommended. $3.99 each.


Dave Van Domelen, "The Mandarin? You know this nut?" "Yeah. Old
friend from China." "Then it is SETTLED. You are disliked on every
continent." - Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther, MUAEMH #1