Dave's Capsules for September 2024

 

Archive of older reviews

Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): The Glass Scientists vol 1-2

In this installment: Watchmen Chapter 1, Moon Girl's Lab, Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic Turns a Nameless Village into the STRONGEST FORTIFIED CITY vol 3, Go Go Loser Ranger vol 11, The Great Cleric vol 11, Tank Chair vol 1, Chainsaw Man vol 16, Delicious in Dungeon vol 11-14, Delicious in Dungeon Adventurer's Bible, The Glass Scientists vol 1-2, Failure To Launch: a Tour of Ill-Fated Futures, Fantastic Four #23-25, Vengeance of the Moon Knight #8-9, Ultraman x Avengers #1 (of 4), My Adventures With Superman #3-4 (of 6), Gatchaman #2-3, Vampirella #671, Power Rangers Infinity One-Shot.

A bit of a side note since I'm noticing a pattern in some of this month's reviews: sometimes thinking more deeply about a piece of entertainment makes me like it less.  The "Spirit of the Staircase" is that situation where, on the stairs outside a theater, thinking about what you just saw results in finding flaws.  It was enjoyable at the time, but once you're out of the immediate moment, it's hard to remember why you thought it was so good.  And that's going to happen sometimes, definitely more often when you deliberately go back to the metaphorical staircase to think about something a few hours or days later.  There's several things below that were perfectly good entertainment at the time, but upon writing the reviews, I find myself lukewarm at best.

And that's okay.  There's other times when looking more deeply reveals even more to like, even if I'm risking that I might like the fanfic I'm creating in my head about the work and the themes and stuff I'm seeing weren't put there by the creator.

This is, admittedly, kind of a bad month for fault-finding, but don't worry, I'm not turning into a grump or anything along those lines.

"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.

It is 2024, I am watching a
Watchmen adaptation....

Watchmen Chapter 1: DC/WB - Okay, a two-movie adaptation of the original comic, leaning HARD on Dave Gibbons being involved to give it legitimacy.  If you can put aside the "not enough legitimacy" issue, it's a pretty good adaptation on a technical level.  It uses things that animation can do that comics can't do in order to compensate for some of the things comics can do but animation can't (or doesn't do well).  There isn't quite the density of background information the comics provided, but they do a very good job of getting the worldbuilding done.  While CG, they did a decent job of making it look like 2D cel animation in the style of Gibbons (they couldn't resist making Rorschach's mask blatantly CG so it looked more "impressive" though).  The voice work was generally competent, although I do wonder at the choice to have Jeffrey Combs in it voicing someone other than Rorschach (the Rorschach voice acting was pretty pedestrian).  If you're wondering about the pacing, the cliffhanger point is Rorschach's capture by the police, although they did admit to shuffling the order of a few things in the Making Of featurettes.  On a craft level, recommended.  But it's not so good that I'd suggest anyone set aside any ethical stance against giving DC money for a non-Moore Watchmen project.  Price varies by store and format. 

Moon Girl's Lab: Marvel/Disney+ - While we wait for the third season, Disney+ dropped (which I wasn't really paying attention, so not necessarily this month) a batch of 3-5 minute shorts built around Schoolhouse-Rock-style edutainment songs and not really telling much in the way of stories.  If you skip the repeated end credits, you can get through all of them in half an hour.  The animation is up to the show's standards, but the songs are...well, they're no Schoolhouse Rock, and some of the situations are painfully contrived to make the lesson work.  The science varies from questionable to simplistic but essentially correct, so it doesn't really do a great job on the education side either.  Neutral.

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.  I will also occasionally include things I read on Library Pass (check to see if your public library gives access to it), although the interface can be laggy and freeze sometimes.

Nothing this month.

Manga Collections:

With manga collections coming to dominate my reading habits, I decided to formally split them off from Trades (informally they'd already been split for a while).

A LOT of stuff in this category arrived right at the end of the month, making it a bit of a rush to get them read in time for a September column.

Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord: Production Magic Turns a Nameless Village into the STRONGEST FORTIFIED CITY vol 3: Seven Seas Entertainment - And now we take a turn into strangely innocent yet still creepy harem manga as Lord Van (10 years old in body, 30-something in mind) acquires a couple of potential brides who are suitable for his apparent age while he keeps mooning over his hot nanny (and knowing it's Inappropriate).  The cliffhanger of last volume is resolved with a speed and ease that most of the defenders find unsettling...and the other regional powers find downright CONCERNING.  And that's where most of the actual challenges of this volume come from, dealing with their neighbors who were pretty sure there was just a tiny hamlet with nothing of value, not the STRONGEST FORTIFIED CITY.  Van has to at least be present for diplomacy with both demihumans and a representative of the guy who used to nominally control his new territory, and alliance by marriage is glaring at him from multiple angles.  I suspect one of my concerns with the series (that Van isn't really changing production magic's status in general, just being massively OP himself) might dovetail with one of the bridal prospects, although that may just be hopeful thinking (it'd solve not just my objection, but also give Van a way to relate to one of the girls other than potential marriage).  Anyway, this is more or less a taking stock pause, with Van's preparations and earlier work paying off and going more to the background as he has to focus more on his (considerable) people skills instead of his bottomless font of mana.  Recommended.  $13.99/$17.99 rated Teen 13+ (mostly fantasy violence and some implausibly large breasts)

Go Go Loser Ranger vol 11: Kodansha - Bits and pieces of the origin of the Dragon Keepers come out in flashbacks that motivate the monster-lovers, founded in part by a Keeper who resigned in disgust.  A bit of an Omelas situation is at the root of things, so while the corruptness of the Keepers has been apparent from volume 1, it's clearly not a thing that developed over time, they were rotten from the word go.  A devil's bargain to defeat invaders, sure enough, but a house of lies nonetheless.  Otherwise, lots of fight scenes with characters either introduced last volume or otherwise kinda background...definitely something that would've been easier to follow in color.  Recommended.  $10.99/$14.99Cn rated Older Teen 16+ (violence and dismemberment, a bit of body horror)

The Great Cleric vol 11: Kodansha - Luciel should start a support group with Lord Van and Yuna (Bear Girl), for isekai protagonists who just want to have a nice comfortable life and instead keep finding the reward for a job well done is another job.  This arc continues Luciel's growth from the Best Salaryman to an actual leader who has to trust in his subordinates and think beyond the job he's given.  (And know how far he can trust certain subordinates...those dwarves need a very very short leash.)  The plot also advances a little more quickly in terms of the labyrinth near Yenice than I'd expected, but the reason for rushing it worked pretty cleanly.  I do wonder if Broccoli Lion decided to accelerate the story, or at least wrap up a chunk of character development arc that they'd been getting tired of.  Recommended.  $12.99/$17.99Cn rated Older Teen 16+ (violence, but I think they're just staying consistent with other volumes that have more innuendo)

Rather a different take than GandD.

Tank Chair vol 1: Kodansha - Okay, this is very bloody and gruesome and not particularly serious.  Think Marshal Law's setting, full of criminals and gangs who functionally have superpowers via genetic splicing and cybernetics and stuff, with everything looking very uncomfortable for the user.  The protagonists are escapees from an assassin school who have gone freelance in a particularly nasty slumtown, with the older brother being the talented one until he takes a bullet for his sister and goes into a coma.  The only thing that can awaken him is when he senses "murderous intent" (this is later shown to be more of a psi ability, using parts of his brain not affected by the bullet, and it is apparently a common enough talent that there's known, if usually fatal, ways to make yourself undetectable by such a sense).  So his loving sister does what any sibling would do...hook him up to an armored wheelchair with a costume that's a clear Kamen Rider riff and remote-control him into dangerous situations as physical therapy, convinced that if he encounters a sufficiently strong Murderous Intent it might snap him out of the coma permanently instead of just for a little while.  If you can't find humor in a guy in a wheelchair spinning around rapidly enough to slice a monkey-guy into many horizontal chunks, you should probably avoid this.  Like, avoid it a LOT.  I cannot stress that enough.  While only done in black and white, there's as much gore and ultraviolence as in the most indulgent Marshal Law stories.  And even more body horror.  If you're not bothered by that sort of thing in your fiction, this is worth checking out.  $13.99/$18.99Cn rated Older Teen 16+ but I think they may be lowballing it.

Chainsaw Man vol 16: Viz Media/Shonen Jump - More of the past friends and foes of Chainsaw Man, whom Denji doesn't know from Adam ("Why do strangers keep talking to me?") are coming out of the woodwork.  Denji also gets a new...handler...and is recruited by the Church of Chainsaw Man, but not to be, you know, Chainsaw Man.  It's a very confusing time for Denji, loads of mixed signals and teasing.  Plotwise, it's kinda like that for the reader as well, as it all builds up to a massive anticlimax, if in an amusing way.  Still, I continue to get the feeling that Fujimoto really doesn't have a plan for this arc and is just sort of wandering around amusing himself because the series is successful and worth continuing even if he doesn't have a plan.  Mildly recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK rated Older Teen (sexual innuendo, occasional decapitation and dismemberment, but usually not on the same page)

Delicious in Dungeon vol 11-14: Yen Press - At some point, "Dark Magic" became "Ancient Magic," dunno if it's a translation choice of the original writer changed the term used, though.  Anyway, the story wraps up in these volumes, but interestingly ALL of volume 14 is denouement or epilogue, the Big Bad is defeated in the final pages of volume 13.  Of course, there is a LOT to clean up, so this is fitting, and as a heavily character-driven series the real plots resolve after the overt plot is taken care of.  Overall, I definitely recommend picking up this series if you're okay with a 14 volume investment.  It's both a sweeping world-changing epic and a series of deeply personal stories about family both found and born into.  $15.00/$19.50 each, rated Teen LV.  (So, yes, that's over $200 to get the whole story, but as I noted a few months back you can also read it on the LibraryPass app if your library subscribes.)

Delicious in Dungeon: the Adventurer's Bible: Yen Press - A guidebook to characters, setting and so forth.  I actually bought this in the same order where I got vol 2-4, but waited to read it until after I finished the whole story.  Turns out that you're spoiler-safe after finishing volume 11, though.  One good aspect of this guidebook is that on top of the usual character profiles and worldbuilding stuff, there's also original (if somewhat hastily-drawn) short stories tied to various character entries, sometimes fleshing out the origins of side characters, sometimes just being a sort of "deleted scenes" bonus content.  Recommended.  $18.00/$21.50Cn, rated Teen LV.

Expected next month: Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 5 had a shelf date of September 24, but my copy won't arrive until early October.  Kaiju No. 8 vol 11, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 4, I'm In Love With the Villainess vol 7.  Cat + Gamer vol 6 is technically coming out in the last week of October, but odds I'll have it in hand before November are low since it's not a book that my local B&N stocks and online pre-orders have tended to arrive several days to a week after release date.

Other Trades:

Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, whatever. If it's bigger than a "floppy" but not Manga, it goes here.  

 

My pre-order of Aaron Alexovich's Shock City got lost in transit, and my second try ordered more than a week before the end of the month arrived too late for me to give it a fair read, so it'll be in next month's column.  (The brick and mortar store here never got a copy, so grabbing it from the shelf and cancelling the online order wasn't an option.)

Less "neither hide nor hair" and
more "both Hyde and hair."

The Glass Scientists vol 1: Penguin Teen - Okay, this webcomic collection came out last October, but I chanced across it because the local B&N had put it face-out and it caught my eye. The setting for this series is an alternate Victorian England that is a somewhat "friendlier" take on all the mad scientists and magicians and so forth of the era...League of Extraordinary Gentlemen characters by way of Narbonic or Girl Genius attitudes.  Like, they're tampering in God's Domain, they're dangerous lunatics, but they're not bad PEOPLE.  Mostly.  Dr. Henry Jekyll has founded the Society for Arcane Sciences as a haven for and PR exercise on behalf of the more presentable "rogue scientists" who inhabit the era.  Creator S.H. Cotucno follows the not-uncommon headcanon that "Edward Hyde" is only evil and depraved by the standards of an extremely repressed and sheltered English gentleman, and is actually still pretty...well, harmless may be too strong a term, but several actually dangerous people in the story find him adorable in his attempts to seem dangerous.  (That he is sometimes pretty dangerous is more in the way of carelessness and exuberance than intent.)  While the Society has a cast of dozens, the story wisely focuses on a handful of characters, with the rest being more of a geek chorus and weathervane for the influence of the stronger personalities.  A newly recruited member, a country lad who came to the big city to study monsters and ended up a fluffy werewolf, gets to be the target for most of the necessary exposition.  Doctor Moreau turns up as an example of the sort of mad scientist who makes the rest look bad, although the real danger to the Society seems to be the arrival of one of their legendary idols and predecessors in Arcane Scientists (who also happens to be rabidly socialist or even anarchist and wildly disapproves of Jekyll's efforts to make the Society "respectable").  And, of course, the constabulary is not exactly thrilled to have a concentration of "rogue scientists" in town even if Jekyll vouches for them.  Okay, you might say, another steampunk mad science series, what's the big deal?  Why is this listed as an Item of Note up top?  Because both the visual storytelling and writing work extremely well.  While some of the "is it code or is it overt" story elements may be accidental (see below, they are NOT), they manage to handle the multiple layers in an entertaining way.  It doesn't try to be as reference-heavy as LoEG, although I'm sure Jess Nevins would be able to place several characters I just assumed were original to this book.  :)  Oh, and if it occasionally looks like Miss Rachel is pulling a Mabel Pines face,  Cotucno did storyboarding for Gravity Falls, so some of that probably rubbed off.  Strongly recommended.  $16.99/$23.49Cn (about 300 pages, full color)

The Glass Scientists vol 2: Penguin Teen - The middle of the story fills in a lot of background, takes some hints and foreshadowing from volume 1 and expands on them, and sets up the Big Ending that'll come in volume 3.  So, I said above that there was some mix in coding that might have been accidental, but it's very clear in this volume that it's intentional (even if you don't read the character notes in back where Cotucno admits to it).  Y'see, in the original Victorian stories that inspired this series, one could argue that at least some of the tales of abominations of nature and unholy transformations and monstrous drives were metaphors for LGBTQ+ matters, which were illegal, unholy, etc. at the time.  In volume 1, Cotucno made it clear that at least some of the "evil" that Jekyll exiled into Hyde was "disaster bisexual," and that the exiling had not been all that effective.  Revelations and heart to hearts in volume 2 pretty much spell out that not only are there all these metaphors for sexuality and gender identity, but the cast is also a lot queerer than is safe for people in Victorian times.  (The notes at the end reveal that when one of the character arcs was planned, Cotucno did not yet consider themselves trans, but that sometimes these things happen.)  This volume isn't as humorous as the first, although it still has plenty of humor, because it does spend a lot of time on affairs of the heart and origin stories which can get a bit heavy.  It's still largely a comedy, but it leans less into the manic farce of the previous volumes, Hyde's efforts at farcical mania notwithstanding.  I'm waffling on the overall rating, I didn't enjoy it as much as the first volume but it does have to bear a lot more of the plot on its shoulders and the actual storytelling craft is more polished.  Definitely recommended at least, but I think I'll only really be able to tell if it's "strongly recommended" in retrospect once the story concludes next volume...probably in a year given the gap between volumes 1 and 2.  (Yeah, I suppose I could go hit the website TheGlassScientists.com and do an archive trawl to catch up, but I definitely am out of time for this month's column.)  $17.99/$24.50Cn (same thickness as volume 1, but inflation)

Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures: Iron Circus Comics - Hey, a Kickstarter fulfillment, as prophesied.  The premise as billed is visions of the future (planned communities, revolutionary inventions, etc) that failed to come to pass, but the actual content tends to drift afield of that and into the more general realm of "the future we got kinda sucks compared to what we hoped it might be."  Nor is every story a tale of failure or tainted success, but sometimes the success is by someone other than the focal character (e.g. in the very first story, the friend who abandoned the utopian community that crashed and burned ended up being the guy who designed the Brooklyn Bridge).  The stories range from a handful of pages to the size of a full floppy, all in color, with the sort of variable quality and tone you'd expect from a loosely themed anthology.  Some are outright "that was never going to work" inventions presented in a comical tone, several involve failed predictions of disaster (Y2K, 2012 Mayan Calendar, a religious cult or two), a few are about things that were just ahead of their time (like the early attempts at blood transfusions), and a lot are about how capitalism has taken the promise of the future and made it suck.  Still, an interesting if somewhat defocused read, mostly by people you likely haven't heard of yet (Ryan North is the most prominent name among the creators, the rest are distant seconds or lower).  Recommended.  $30.00 when it becomes available to non-backers.

Expected next month: Nothing Special vol 2, Cursed Princess Club vol 4, plus the late-arriving Shock City.

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 #23-25: Marvel - Last time I commented that now the FF's involvement in the vampire crossover made sense...so of course they're not allowed to be involved in the followup.  In #23, Reed is trying to figure out Doom's game, in #24 they're too busy to worry about it, and in #25 they end up trying to get into Latveria and get isekai'ed into a side story.  About all #21-22 accomplished was to have Reed learn (for the Nth time) that Magic Has Rules And He Shouldn't Dismiss It As Mere Superstition, but I guess North has so flanderized Reed lately that the lesson needed to be re-learned on-panel.  The main plot in #23-24 is a polemic against how the wealthy will destroy the world if it means gaining a few more moments of life for themselves, a sort of "What If Elon Musk Was A Space Octopus And Actually Could Invent Things Himself?" story.  It does lean kinda hard on the "smart person is so smart they can trivially bypass computer security protocols written by a race they just met a few hours ago in a language they'd never seen before" trope, but this time the humans on the receiving end of the Magic Hacker Powers.  In short, the #23-24 story, while it had some fun moments, suffers badly from "Spirit of the Staircase" problems.  #25 has gotten praise online for being about refusing to accept a choice between two horrors and instead finding a third way, but the actual plot premise that sets it up doesn't stand up to a whole lot of thought either, and requires ignoring a lot of Marvel precedent for time travel.  Granted, Marvel time travel precedent is also self-contradictory, but Reed acts like there's only one way things could possibly work, unless he Sciences up an alternative.  In short, all three issues were enjoyable reads if you don't think about them too much, which feels like a bad fit for a main character who's main trait is thinking about things too much.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99 each

Vengeance of the Moon Knight #8-9 (of 9): Marvel - The cover of #8 is a bit misleading, since it really depicts something that happens in #9.  Of course, that it depicts ANYTHING seems unusual for Marvel these days...of the three Fantastic Four covers I got (admittedly one was a Variant Edition) only one has anything to do with the story inside, and only vaguely.  Anyway, #8 happens during the climax of the vampire crossover, and more organically shows some of the fallout than the scene in FF #23...such as the fact that all vampires are now daywalkers, apparently.  And they may be more common than mutants, so I guess "everyone's an Inhuman" redux for the next batch of new characters?  Unless Doom undoes this in the next event, whatever.  The parts that are important to the cast of this book are adequately explained, it has a big impact on them as people, and MacKay has a good track record of making use of this sort of thing.  One loose end remains, which is to say the actual main plot of this retroactively limited series: the false Moon Knight.  Dealing with the former Shroud takes up the bulk of #9, along with the moral dilemma of, "When gods are real and you think their morality bites, how do you do the right thing without getting smote?"  Well, it's Moon Knight, so the "how" is "violently," but Marc does manage to thread that particular bird-skull-shaped needle.  I've seen focused arcs and miniseries utterly destroyed by Mandatory Company-Wide Events, but MacKay continues to just fold that stuff into his plot and roll merrily along.  I do feel like the artist was having trouble with deadlines, because it looks rushed in places and I had to double-check that the same person was credited for both issues.  Recommended.  $4.99 each.

Ultraman x Avengers #1 (of 4): Marvel - Marvel has long born the emotional scars, at the editorial level, of all the damage done to the timeline by the licensed comics of the 70s and 80s.  Can't refer to Godzilla by name.  The Micronauts stories had to have happened, but without any Micronauts trademarks (e.g. "The Baron" is only ever seen in vague shadows now, and never called Karza).  The Transformers crash-landed in an alternate Earth timeline that had a Spider-Man and a Savage Land but was all out of Marvel superhumans by the time Blackrock founded the Neo-Knights.  And so forth.  While there's still been licensed property crossovers since then, it's generally handled in such a way that Earth-616 needs never refer to the events of the crossover: it's really more alternate Earths involved, or there's a Cosmic Reset Button or memory wipe, etc.  Thus, when the New Avengers crossed over with Transformers in the 00s, it was another world separate from both the regular Marvel and Transformers timelines, with a New Avengers lineup that just happened to match what was going on in the comics at the time.  Which way does this one do it?  Well, I suspect that this series will stay in continuity with whatever Ultraman comic Marvel puts out next, but either the Avengers who show up are from yet another alternate Earth, or I completely missed a big event involving Galactus and they're the Earth-616 squad but will end up undoing the event from their end and never refer it again.  That, however, is fine by me.  I really don't care what Earth-616 at large does anymore, I prefer the small corners anyway (which is why I was so irked last month by the vampire stuff spilling over into both of the regular Marvel books I still get).  I do feel like Higgins has been saving up Good Lines for the Avengers for a while now and is finally getting to write 'em into a story, there's some very good stuff packed into a few pages of banter.  Additionally, the excuse for the crossover fits very well with the overall arc of Marvel's Ultraman comics, so there's no reason to hit the Cosmic Reset from their end.  Nicely one-way-walled.  Recommended.  $4.99

My Adventures With Superman #3-4 (of 6): DC - I've previously commented on the challenge of telling an interquel story when you're not allowed to make any lasting changes, or even really have characters grow noticeably.  It's made even more difficult by the fact that season 2 of the cartoon has a pretty strong arc that builds on just about everything seen in season 1, so despite the passage of time between seasons there's not a lot of ROOM for a deuterocanonical story to breathe.  As tends to happen, this means the story is mostly about new characters who will have to be written back out at the end.  A new government-backed antagonist who can see the light of reason before being reassigned elsewhere so he can't help Superman, or who can wallow in blind duty and get thoroughly defeated so that they're not around to bother Superman in S2, for instance.  And Amazo gets to be the actual protagonist, helped through his journey of self-discovery by Superman and the gang.  Is it working?  So far...mixed, I'd say.  Amazo goes through some pretty stock "awakened robot" cliches and tropes, and the writers seem to assume everyone knows the regular Amazo so there's not a lot of explanation (I think it was covered a little in #2, but it's more show-don't-tell through visuals and that's not quite good enough IMO, especially since he seems to be more Crusher Creel than Super Adaptoid here).  Mildly recommended.  $3.99 each

Gatchaman #2-3: Mad Cave - Galactor #1 theoretically picked up from the end of the fight in Gatchaman #2, but it...doesn't.  Because over there, the defeat of the sundew monster was Yet Another Failure to explain to Leader X, while here we see that it was meant only as a distraction from the real plan, which was a rousing success.  Might need to work on line editing, guys.  I suppose that we can take the opening of Galactor #1 to just be a placeholder for generic "Gatchaman beats yet another mecha monster" scene.  But back to this story.  Galactor's plan is actually fairly clever and subtle by the standards of an organization whose go-to move is to unleash a mecha-kaiju.  It also brings the Devil Stars (basically Jun's counterparts in Galactor, espionage specialists and mistresses of disguise) into focus as being potentially more dangerous than any mecha-kaiju, and by the end of #3 we're seeing that the Blackbirds (Evil Gatchaman team) are also being deployed.  So, kudos for using the deeper bench of Galactor and not just throwing a monster of the week at the heroes.  All of this, however, seems to be mostly backdrop to what Bunn seems to be setting up as the big conflict: why does Nambu insist on never activating the backup teams, even while he seems perfectly willing to let main team members die as Acceptable Losses?  I do have some speculation, but we haven't seen enough of this take on Gatchaman for me to know how valid it might be.  (Mainly, is Nambu still keeping secret the alien origins of his tech?  If so, some of his odd behavior might be in service of Inscrutable Alien Advice and he can't explain himself to the others.  I presume that they're not changing that part...50+ year old spoiler warning, both Gatchaman and Galactor are proxies in a war between distant aliens who can communicate FTL but only travel STL.)  The writing is heavy on melodrama, everyone being Very Insistent about things, extreme in their emotions unless they're being disturbingly cold and emotionless...pretty consistent with the source material, in that respect.  Recommended.  $4.99 each

Vampirella #671: Dynamite - Time for a new arc, potentially weirder than the last one, and just as tied to a somewhat loose grasp on time.  Draculina has retreated into the Dark World to keep from dying of the poisoned blood she drank in the last arc, and this time it manifests as what looks like tight but uninked and uncolored pencils.  The premise is that this particular incarnation is based on some stuff Katie (Draculina's split-timeline self who timeshares existence with her) did/is doing (time travel and body sharing make verbs weird) in middle school with a kid who is a child version of the original publisher of Vampirella comics.  Unfortunately, this is only a temporary escape, because Draculina knows that she's in a world that's both badly-written and very splattergore with some sort of Ultimate Monster (that Laios would appreciate) waiting in the wings.  The Dark World scenes are set in 1969, the "Katie does Monsterfic For James Warren" scenes are "55 years from now (aka 2024), and there's also a short scene bringing Nyx back into the story as Not Dracula Honest wants her help rescuing his daughter.  Vampirella herself is not in this issue.  Buckle in, this feels like another arc that will be very interesting to read all at once, but kinda frustrating to read one piece at a time over several months.  Provisionally recommended to wait for the trade.  $4.99

Power Rangers Infinity one-shot: Boom! Studios - No, I haven't read any of the other Boom! series (not even the ones available on LibraryPass), but the solicitation for this one sounded like it might stand alone and work as long as the reader had some background in Power Rangers.  And for the most part it does (it helps to know a bit about the villain of the piece, Poisandra, but the fact she's considered lame and keeps coming back from the dead anyway is conveyed sufficiently).  Interestingly, if you're looking for a Watsonian explanation for the lack of new Power Rangers shows in the foreseeable future, Poisandra's plot can be assumed to take a while before it gets foiled.  She has acquired a Plot Device that lets her reboot the Power Rangers, essentially set up a new season at will.  She's looking for a team she can actually beat, though, and since she's so pathetic she ends up just re-rolling over and over, preventing the next Power Rangers show from happening.  A handful of the Rangers she created managed to escape being de-booted, and they've teamed up (as the Power Rangers Infinity) to stop her, but they're always a step behind.  So that's where the story starts, with Poisandra seeking out the right sort of pathetic Power Rangers fan (at a convention, of course, where she's assumed to be a cosplayer) to help her create a team that's weak enough for even Poisandra to beat.  (One of the Infinity team is from the Pride and Prejudice Rangers, and by coincidence the Sentai and Sensibility TTRPG Kickstarter just shipped.)  We do get enough backstory to see that when Poisandra creates a new team, at least some of them got to have their stories play out before being wiped, even if the opening pages make it look like she's gotten to the point where she wipes 'em as fast as she can create 'em.  Does any of this take place in the show or existing comics continuity?  Almost definitely not!  The framing sequence is in a world where Power Rangers are strictly fictional, but it's not our world since the comic publisher the protagonist wants to work for is Highland Studios rather than Boom! Studios.  Yeah, the whole thing is pretty cheesy and goes heavy on the cheap sentiment, but isn't that the true spirit of the Power Rangers?  Recommended.  $7.99

Expected next time I review floppies (since there might not be enough to ship again until November): Definitely Gatchaman Galactor #2 (of 4), My Adventures With Superman #5, Ultraman x Avengers #2 (as those already shipped by the first week of October), probably Fantastic Four #26, Gatchaman #4, Gatchaman Galactor #2, Vampirella #672. Charm City #4 is solicited for October, but #3 was solicited for September and there's no sign of it, so....

Dvandom, aka Dave Van Domelen, is an Associate Professor of Physical Science at Amarillo College, maintainer of one of the two longest-running Transformers fansites in existence (neither he nor Ben Yee is entirely sure who was first), has secretly been an AI since 1993, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.

 

"Now he probably thinks I'm some sort of LOONEY."  "You ARE some sort of looney."  "I don't want HIM to know that!" - Miss Rachel and Dr. Jekyll, The Glass Scientists vol 1