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interests / alt.toys.transformers / Dave's Capsules for December 2021

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o Dave's Capsules for December 2021Dave Van Domelen

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Dave's Capsules for December 2021

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From: dvan...@eyrie.org (Dave Van Domelen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc,alt.toys.transformers
Subject: Dave's Capsules for December 2021
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2021 06:02:49 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Coherent Comics UnInc
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Originator: dvandom@eyrie.org (Dave Van Domelen)
 by: Dave Van Domelen - Thu, 30 Dec 2021 06:02 UTC

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
Welp, so much for COVID going away. Hello, Omicron.

Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Kaijumax
Season Six #5 (of 6).

In this installment: Venom: Let There Be Carnage, The Return of Captain
Invincible, Hawkeye (Disney+), Adventure Finders Book 3 Chapter 6, Action
Activists #2, Love and Capes in the Time of COVID, Liberty Brigade (and
associated material), The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor, She-Ra: Legend of
the Fire Princess, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, Moon Knight #6, Vampirella
Dracula Unholy #1, The Blue Flame #6, White Ash Season 2 #1 (of 6), Kaijumax
Season Six #5 (of 6), My Little Pony Generations #3 (of 5), Transformers
Shattered Glass #4-5 (of 5), Transformers Wreckers: Tread & Circuits #3 (of
5), Transformers Beast Wars #11, Transformers #38.

Current Wait List (books either Diamond didn't ship or my store failed
to order): Nothing this month.

"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.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage: Sony - I generally enjoyed this, and didn't
have nearly as many problems with it as most seem to have. However, I did
have one big problem, and it did make the first half drag pretty badly.
Specifically, when writers of a sequel have no idea how to deal with a
romantic or even brotherly relationship established in a previous
installment, the cliche is to break it up. No matter how well things seemed
to be going when last we saw the friends or lovers, it's breakup time,
because writing around a healthy relationship is hard, while breaking one and
then getting back to the status quo ante is trivially easy. Now, there's a
difference between this and "showing how no relationship is perfect" stories,
in which a couple works through problems. This is quick and lazy break 'em
up. The second half does sort of explore some of the complexities of a
polyamorous relationship (when one of the three is an alien symbiote), but it
felt like lazy padding to just spend the first act tearing down everything
Eddie had managed to accomplish in the first movie. If you can endure the
first act relationship cliches, the rest of the movie is pretty good. Mildly
recommended.

The Return of Captain Invincible: Seven Keys - Okay, this is an old
movie, from 1983. And, surprisingly, given the blatant "bump it up to R"
swearing and nudity in the first "present-day" scenes, it's rated PG (to be
fair, the nudity is mostly of the "pause and have a good copy" variety
background stuff, foreground is kept to naughty underwear stuff). I found
out about this because its show-stopper number, Christopher Lee singing "Pick
Your Poison," was going around Tumblr. And the songs are the main thing this
movie has going for it, having been written by Richard O'Brien of Rocky
Horror Picture Show fame. It's a superhero farce musical starring Alan Arkin
as a WWII kinda-Superman who went into an alcoholic tailspin after McCarthy
went after him, and ended up a drunk in Australia. When Mister Midnight
(Lee) steals a Hypno-Ray, the President sends out a call to find Captain
Invincible, who spends much of the rest of the movie trying to remember how
to use his powers. If this had been done in the early 70s, it might have
done okay, but this followed several Christopher Reeve Superman movies and
barely has special effects up to the standard of George Reeves. His powers
are a grab-bag of "stuff we can do cheaply and badly for laughs," including
an "amazing computer brain" that doesn't even make sense for a WWII hero (not
that anachronism is the worst of this story's sins). Basically, the clip of
"Pick Your Poison" is very much the high point of the movie, and there's not
enough other good stuff in it to be worth the time watching. Don't bother
with this.

Hawkeye: Disney+ - Another six episode miniseries, and while you might
want to watch Avengers: Endgame and Black Widow before watching this, most of
the relevant information is supplied along the way. Kate Bishop saw Hawkeye
fighting the Chitauri in New York when she was a little girl, which inspired
her to become a hero, and one day she runs across some of Hawkeye's old Ronin
business, getting tangled up in stuff way over her head. Based loosely on
the recent comics, although some characters are just reusing names and no
more. There were a few scenes I felt clunked (notably the LARPer stuff), but
I was generally left satisfied. The final episode cameo villain raises more
questions than they answer, of course, but IMO the presence of the actor
playing the character does not automatically mean that their previous
appearances as that character are part of the MCU canon. Recommended.

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 5: Patreon.com - Meanwhile (after a
brief check-in with Sister Arirarra), Asogog runs right into the Arokian
version of Derek Chauvin and...things escalate. While Clari's fate is
unrevealed, things are starting to look up as one of the separated heroes
manages to accomplish things, even if those things are relatively small. An
emotional turning point after several issues of teeth-kicks. Recommended.
$1/month on Patreon.

Action Activists #2: NYC Department of Education - Van Lente and
Dunleavy turn in another free public education comic about activism, this
time focusing on a trio of stories in and around New York City (underground
railroad, Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and the garbage issue in Harlem in the
70s). https://www.weteachnyc.org/resources/resource/action-activists-copy/
is where you can find it. Like #1, the writing does sometimes get a little
For The Kiddies (a problem with their Action Presidents books too), but it's
educational and interesting, plus it's free. Recommended.

Trades:

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

Love and Capes in the Time of COVID: Maerkle Press - These pages were
all posted to Thom Zahler's Patreon over the last year or so, and collected
as a Kickstarter project. As with most L&C books, it's more about the
personal lives and downtime than about the superhuman battles, although
there's a couple of those. Zahler deals with the "Couldn't superheroes fix
this?" issue reasonably well, but mostly spends time on how Crusader tries to
keep his family afloat. Of course, the somewhat optimistic "the worst has
passed" ending was written before Delta, much less Omicron, but maybe the
heroes made enough of a difference in that world that COVID wrapped up before
Delta got a foothold. Recommended. $9.99 cover price.

Liberty Legion: Thrilling Nostalgia Comics - Another Kickstarter, this
one has at its core a 100 page graphic novel, but there's also a #0, a
selection of deleted scenes (which we're told fit in after page 34...but the
GN has no page numbers and near as I can tell the deleted scenes go in
earlier than the 34th page), and a Heroes of the Golden Age style OHOTMU book
done by the writer who does Heroes of the Golden Age. Oh, and another #0-ish
book that's mostly pin-ups. A really large percentage of the page count is
just "Hey, here's an update of another public domain hero/villain, maybe with
a new name since the name got grabbed by someone else" but there's a
surprisingly dense story in among the pin-ups and side story narration.
Loads of artists, although most of the actual story pages in the main book
are by Barry Kitson/Mark Gray and Ron Frenz/Josef Rubenstein. Michael Finn
does all the writing and Mark Waid the editing. Finn shoots for an All Star
Squadron sort of tone, not "Golden Age comics as they were written," but
"Golden Age heroes as they might have actually talked," but it's a sometimes
awkward fit. Despite the cast of dozens, the main characters are a pair of
new heroes created for the book, National Anthem and Bill of Rights, who do
spend a fair amount of time on the Kyle Rayner Tour of being told that
they're valid heroes by heroes with actual reputations. Anyway, a decent
read, but I don't know where you might buy it, because the publisher
(Ka-Blam.com) doesn't have any in stock, and the company that included a $10
gift card along with the book only sells a variant cover for collectors'
prices (like, $60). I suppose it'll be available in other ways eventually.


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