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
Yeah, Diamond is continuing to suck, just slightly less.

Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing that
came in.

In this installment: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Adventure Finders Book 3
Episode 9, Monkey Prince #3 (of 12), Shang-Chi #11, Moon Knight #10,
Vampirella/Dracula Unholy #5 (of 6), Draculina #3, Transformers War's End #3
(of 4), Transformers #42.

Current Wait List (books either Diamond didn't ship or my store failed
to order): Arrowsmith v2 #4 (of 6), Norse Mythology III #3 (of 6), Kaijumax
Season 6 #6 (of 6), Transformers Beast Wars Annual 2022.

"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.

Spider-Man: No Way Home: Sony/Marvel - The third "Sony shares with
Disney" Spider-Man movie, and clearly written with the anticipation of being
the last, so that Sony could go back to building their own
Spiderverse...something that was definitely already scuttled by the time this
movie came out on disc, with Morbius not doing very well. And, fair warning,
I found the scenes between "The police come for Peter" and "Peter goes to the
Sanctum Sanctorum" to be painfully cringe and ended up skipping over big
chunks of them. Once I got past that, though, the movie settled down and
became enjoyable. One could say that despite DaFoe chewing all the scenery
(very well) as the Goblin, the real antagonist of this film is Peter Parkers'
overdeveloped sense of responsibility. He could have fixed his own life
pretty quickly, even after the botched spell, but insisted on helping his
other-reality enemies avoid their own deaths, and that is the main plot of
the movie. Not "Three Spider-Men versus the Sinister Five," but rather "With
Great Power Comes Great Responsibility, Damn It." Recommended, other than
scenes 2 and 3. Price varies by format and store.

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 Episode 9: Patreon.com - The tide turns, and
the characters on the cover do not actually appear in this issue, oops.
Mecomi attends to some affairs of state, Asogog finally does the thing
everyone was told not to do, and Sister Ariarra starts the slow process of
regathering the party. The very long day gets longer and we see that while
you can split the party in a story better than in a game, boy does it dial up
the page count. :) Recommended. Minimum $1/month on Patreon.

Trades:

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

None this month, my order of Happy Kanako vol 3 hasn't come in yet. I
did consider reviewing a couple of "comics and activity pages" licensed
Marvel magazines I found at Dollar Tree, but they're not really worth the
effort (despite one having Ralph Macchio writing and the other Ron Lim art).

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 #3 (of 12): DC - Despite Baije's best efforts, the two
plot threads continue to not merge until the last page of the issue, and
through no effort of the pig's. Meanwhile, is Sun Wukong really the Monkey
Prince's dad, or is Arm-Fall-Off Boy? A lot of Refusing the Call, but
amusing enough to keep going. Recommended. $3.99

Shang-Chi #11: Marvel - Mostly the Five Weapons being massively out of
their depth in enemy territory until another point of MCU convergence is
attained. I feel that Yang's way more interested in making Shang-Chi match
the MCU version than in telling a story here. Mildly recommended. $3.99

Moon Knight #10: Marvel - Sometimes a clever and well constructed story
can be hamstrung by a bit of bad research in a throwaway point at the end. I
mean, yeah, comicbook science is Weird, but if you show characters using
commercial-style radio communicators and don't know what sorts of things
utterly block radio signals, it puts feet of clay on the statue. You're
asking the reader to think, then make the reader regret thinking. Ah well.
Mostly a good story. Mildly recommended. $3.99

Vampirella Dracula Unholy #5 (of 6): Dynamite - Okay, backstory fill as
we find Vampi was about a year too late to actually do anything about
Dracula, although she still has the small victory of maybe saving Matt, even
though his entire life is collapsing anyway. Priest is usually better at
making individual issues readable while jumping around, maybe this will work
better read all at once or maybe it's tripping over something in production
and won't ever be coherent. I mean, I stopped working on this column last
night because I felt I was being too unfair due to "tired at the end of the
week" crankiness, but even now well-rested I can't really think of much
positive to say about this issue. I mean, there's a couple of good scenes in
the flashbacks, but the overall story feels like it fell apart somewhere
between script and the printer. Sacred Six held together better. Very
mildly recommended. $3.99

Draculina #3: Dynamite - Poor Katie, doomed to be part of stories that
take a dozen issues to catch up to their first issues. It's not as hard to
follow as last issue, I think the artist is getting better at making sure the
"what day is this" scene-setting is done properly. Anyway, things are coming
together reasonably well, and the issue ends on a number of
questions...almost all of which are answered by the Next Issue box, d'oh.
Way to let the wind out of the dramatic sails, editorial. Mildly
recommended. $3.99

Arrowsmith Behind Enemy Lines #4: Image - Missing from the shipment that
it was supposed to be in.

Norse Mythology III #3 (of 6): Dark Horse - Back-ordered.

Kaijumax Season 6 #6 (of 6): Oni Press - The long-awaited series finale
(well, unless there's a "movie"), so of course Diamond didn't ship it.

Transformers Beast Wars Annual 2022: IDW - Also missing from the Diamond
shipment.

Transformers: War's End #3 (of 4): IDW - This really feels like it was
originally planned to be spread over 12 issues. Fights start and then stop
almost immediately, characters enter and leave and check off plot points in a
way that might fit well in the original Marvel comic's pacing but really
doesn't suit Ruckley's ultra-decompressed style. From slow trudging to
Keystone Kops high speed camerawork, maybe if Ruckley had figured out more
appropriate pacing a few years ago the stories would have been generally
better. I mean, I can almost see through the page to the outline. There's
some stuff that was set up and is now "paying off" too quickly to leave a
mark. Mildly recommended, because at least it IS paying off. $3.99

Transformers #42: IDW - Meanwhile, in the other half of basically the
same story, this issue is about half "Autobots try to pull off a plot device
to make all Cybertron's problems solve each other" and half "Optimus has yet
another mystic experience in which he is assured he can save Cybertron."
There isn't quite as bad of a "hurry up and resolve things before we lose the
license" here, but it still reeks of emergency backup plot. Mildly
recommended. $3.99

Dave Van Domelen, "Why is fighting you always SO GROSS?!" "Then next
time, DON'T FIGHT ME!" - Robin and Monkey Prince, Monkey Prince #3 (of 12)