Dave's Capsules for December 2024

 

Archive of older reviews

Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Magical Girl Incident vol 3 (of 3)

In this installment: What If? Season 3, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear vol 10, Tank Chair vol 2, Heterogenia Linguistico vol 3-5, Magical Girl Incident vol 3 (of 3), Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 5, Empowered vol 12

"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.

What If...they made Santa hats
in Uatu's size?

What If? Season 3: Marvel/Disney+ - The first four episodes tended towards the light-hearted or even goofy despite all the implied or depicted death, and I particularly liked the "Agatha Harkness stars in Howard Stark's movies as cover for a massive ritual" episode that involved a sort of Busby Berkeley vs. Bollywood dance sequence.  I did like the fact there didn't seem to be any particular connections.  Episode 1 was basically a riff on Mech Strike meets Godzilla and/or Ultraman, Ep 2 with Agatha was song and dance and making the Eternals movie never happen, Ep 3 a goofy buddy comedy, and Ep 4 a sort of followup to a throwaway gag in one of the season 1 episodes.  But then the arc showed up, and it kinda retroactively made me cringe about the first four eps, because I knew that they'd somehow be roped into the endgame.  Look, tying multiple What If? stories into a single narrative was somewhat fresh and interesting in season 1, but it was already feeling tedious in season 2.  Fortunately, it didn't turn out to be a big "everyone has to save the multiverse" story, but more of a personal thing about friendship.  And blowing stuff up.  The stakes were still cosmic, in a way, but really about changing someone's heart even if it took a large dose of Kirby Krackle to get there.  All in all, a bit uneven, and some of the episodes felt like they were driven by what voice actors were available.  If you already have Disney+, it's worth taking the time to watch this season, but it's not something I'd recommend subscribing just to watch.

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.  The first of the Adventure Finders epilogues is delayed due to artist hand pain.

Manga Collections:

Most of these are "tankobon" or collections of work serialized in a weekly or monthly publication, although some were written directly for the collection.  All of them have been translated from Japanese (or maybe Korean, although I don't think I'm reading any manhwa) into English.  Things with a manga aesthetic but done in English originally will go in one of the sections below as appropriate.

About the only characters Yuna
is taller than.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear vol 10: Seven Seas Entertainment - With the fighting done and the escort mission a success, time for a vacation break.  Well, a working vacation, but nothing gets blow up or killed this volume, so that counts as downtime.  Instead, this is sort of an emotional arc climax as Yuna is forced to face the fact that she's not the person she thought she was.  Mortifyingly, as has been obvious to all observers for nine volumes, she's a Good Person.  The actual plots and subplots don't really change direction yet, Yuna's still focused on getting the creature comforts she left behind in the modern ("real") world, but it's harder to ignore that she at least APPEARS to be the sort of person her grandfather hoped she'd become.  Recommended.  $13.99/$17.99Cn Rated Teen 13+ (a little suggestive stuff, mostly confined to a single panel).

Tank Chair vol 2: Kodansha - Time to do a little more worldbuilding, and Manabu Yashiro goes a little nuts with it.  First off, the book veers into being a high school drama/comedy (albeit with viscera), like a Marshal Law goes to Furinkan High sort of story.  Then we get the origin of the chairs themselves, and finally a plot arc longer than the existence of humanity gets thrown into the mix.  It all ends up feeling like the "seat of the pants" plotting style, but coming together somehow coherently anyway.  There's a high background radiation of excessive violence and a lot of Rule of Cool logic.  And just when it seems to be settling down into a general "inhumanity of humanity and inevitable consequences of end stage capitalism," vibe, it takes a sharp left turn into Full Metal Alchemist or something.  I guess Manabu decided the scope was a little too mundane to support the crazy set pieces.  I'm curious to know where this goes next, and Manabu probably is too.  Mildly recommended.  $13.99/$18.99Cn, rated Older Teen 16+

Heterogenia Linguistico vol 3-5: Yen Press - Okay, all caught up, and vol 6 doesn't have a publication date I can find, leaving me hanging, oops.  Anyway, this is a very slow burn story, more like a Victorian travelogue in pacing (but not in racism or paternalism, it's the opposite there).  It's all about the process of learning about culture and language, and while there's occasional "man vs. nature" conflicts and (sometimes literal) cliffhangers, you really gotta be there for the process or you're probably not going to enjoy this series.  There is an overall long term plot of sorts, with the concerns that human civilization will eventually just steamroller the Netherworld in its hunger for resources.  It's a ticking clock with an unknown amount of time left, and if humanity continues to think of those in the Netherworld as mere creatures the next war will not go very well for the Netherworlders.  Can researchers like the protagonist and his mentor convince the outside world that these are people, and would it even matter given that humans will exploit other humans?  To make things worse, the Netherworld seems to lack a number of cultural norms that would let them mount any sort of unified resistance to human encroachment...faced with seemingly nonviolent colonization they'd just shrug and let themselves get pushed into smaller and smaller pockets before being wiped out entirely...just like the culture of the protagonist's grandmother, the last living speaker of a now-dead language.  Is this series full of metaphors regarding real world treatment of "primitive" peoples?  You betcha.  But it's far more wistful than preachy or polemic.  That tone may change in future installments, of course.  Recommended with the warnings above.  $15.00/$19.50Cn, rated Teen plus Language and Violence.  (Okay, there's a LOT of language, but very little is actually harsh.  Just potentially confusing and frustrating.)

Magical Girl Incident vol 3 (of 3): Yen Press - I do not recommend doing what I did, and just picking this up to read it.  If you read vol 2 when it came out, you really should reread it before starting this one.  Why?  Because Zero Akabane is not exactly good at accommodating readers returning after a break (important characters don't get named or even clearly identified for chapters at a time), and this series does not have the commonly-found "story/characters so far" pages at the start.  It REALLY needs those catch-up pages.  There's a lot of worldbuilding and character stuff that took a while for me to pick back up on, and I regret not stopping and going back to reread previous volumes first.  That said, this is a very satisfying end to the story, and while there's a bunch of worldbuilding elements I wish could be explored, I guess I can hope for a sequel/prequel/spinoff or something.  (I suspect some of those elements were avoided because the creator wasn't sure they could do a good job with 'em.)  The core story, the characters, and how things resolve are all great.  The storytelling craft itself needs some work, though...this goes beyond "writing for the trade" and into "writing for the omnibus."  A binge-read series of three volumes.  Worth the time, but since it came out spread across a few years it was hurt by the formatting.  I'd actually give it a strongly recommended if there was a little better craft going into making things hang together, and I'm still marking it as a Book of Note.  Recommended.  $15.00/$19.50Cn, rated Older Teen with Language and Violence.

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 5: Viz Media/Viz Signature - And now, more magical girls, but these get health benefits and a good paycheck!  Of course, unlike the Magical Girl Incident characters, they do actually need health benefits, since they're really only human outside of their tech.  The mild cliffhanger of volume 4 resolves and the mentoring storyline wraps up, and then it's time to plunge into the Main Arc that's been hinted at for a few volumes: the problem of magic use and its effect (or lack of effect) on Kaii mutation.  For four volumes we've been getting shown how things have been getting worse lately, with repeated hints that it's directly tied to the use of magic, but we finally get to hear the other side of the argument.  Sure, it's a little strawman-ish, and not just because we're following protagonists who disagree with it.  The whole "late stage capitalism ruins everything" theme kicks in HARD this volume, and it's pretty clear that the rich and powerful will cheerfully doom the world as long as they get to make obscene profits along the way.  The counter-argument is really just a paper-thin mask over their greed, similar to (and possibly inspired by) the old Big Tobacco claim that already having cancer caused people to want to smoke cigarettes, rather than cigarettes causing cancer.  On the lighter side, we get to meet another new magical girl, this one being obsessed with paperwork and data, so of course her transformation sequence involves signing forms that appear in mid-air.  Anyway, while there's some good action stuff and emotional development bits, there's also a LOT of Boardroom Drama that advances the plot but is kinda dry and deliberately understated.  Recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Teen (mainly monsters).

Expected next month: Spy x Family vol 13, Chainsaw Man vol 17, After God vol 2, The Great Cleric vol 12.

Turns out the Kaiju No. 8 book I was expecting this month was not a guidebook as I thought from the name, but rather a light novel, meh. 

Other Trades:

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

 

Yeah, definitely shouldn't put
the cover here, so have most of
an interior page.

Empowered vol 12: Dark Horse Publishing - This is the final OGN installment of Empowered, as between the shrinking orders and Adam Warren's declining hand health he's looking into other options (also, this has been done and ready to go for years now, Dark Horse just sat on it, further souring Warren's view of this format).  Those who follow Warren's Patreon have gotten to see a lot of in progress work over the years, and even recently some deleted scenes, and this volume changed direction radically after the first chapter had been drawn, instead using that chapter for flashbacks interspersed between a revival of an abandoned "someone else will draw it" miniseries concept in which Emp is forced through a seemingly endless series of reboots.  Fantasy RPG Emp, hardcore badass Emp, horror movie Emp, married to Captain Havoc Emp, etc.  This has the dual purpose of letting Warren run through a lot of nifty ideas that can't quite support a whole volume (or even more than a few pages in some cases), and forcing Emp to process the fallout of the Trial By Fire that Neurospear put her through a few realtime years ago in volume 11.  Warning, a big part of Emp's solution to all of her problems earns this volume its shrinkwrap and advisory sticker...no nudity beyond what 9PM network TV can't get away with, but SITUATIONS aplenty.  Now, this doesn't actually fix all of her problems and wrap them up in a nice bow, but it's clearly Emp's big turning point, and as happy an ending as she's likely to get in a serial genre.  The path is now clear, the remaining challenges look surmountable.  Other than, you know, the potential destruction of the world still lingering on the horizon like a stormcloud, but at least Emp's going to be going into that crisis with a lighter heart.  Recommended.  $19.99/$25/99Cn with an Explicit Content Parental Advisory with strongly implied throuple.

Expected next month: Cursed Princess Club vol 4 got pushed back, and is technically coming out in January, on the 28th, but if I have to order it for delivery I won't get it until February.

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.)

Yeah, a month off from these as I build up enough of a stack to be worth the shipping costs.  The store where I get my floppies is going to be under new management, but it looks like it'll be a smooth transition.

Expected next month: Fantastic Four #27, Gatchaman #5, Gatchaman Galactor #4 (of 4), Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #2-3, Star Trek Lower Decks #1-2, Vampirella #673, Ultraman x Avengers #3 (of 4), and whatever else comes out in the first week or two of January.

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 joined the ranks of air fryer owners, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.

 

"Freedom ain't a flaw to be fixed!!" - Hiromi Sakura, Magical Girl Incident vol 3