| Dave's Comics and Manga Capsules for August 2024 [message #422849] |
Thu, 29 August 2024 12:46 |
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Dave's Comicbook Capsules Et Cetera
Generally Monthly 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
My mortgage will be paid off before I post the next column.
Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Batman: Wayne
Family Adventures vol 5
In this installment: Harley Quinn Season 3, Spy x Family vol 12, The
Great Cleric vol 10, Mr. Villain's Day Off vol 5, Magilumiere Magical Girls
Inc. vol 3, Delicious in Dungeon vol 8-10, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures
vol 5, Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp, The Eternals by Jack Kirby: the
Complete Collection, The Dusk, Lackadaisy vol 1-2, Fantastic Four #22,
Vengeance of the Moon Knight #6-7 (of 8), Venomverse Reborn #2, My Adventures
With Superman #2 (of 6), Gatchaman #1, Gatchaman Ken: Deathmatch, Gatchaman:
Galactor #1 (of 4), Vampirella #670.
"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.
Harley Quinn Season 3: DC/Max - Finally got around to this. I almost
didn't watch it all, it started off pretty weak, with the cliche "happy
couple from the end of last season has to fight and maybe break up" plot arc,
plus some of the caricatures of the Bat-fam were a bit wearing. However, it
did come together pretty well on the back half, and I particularly liked the
Joker-focused episode that picked up his S2 "wife and kids" thing and kept
doing "plausible but not quite expected" stuff with it. Ultimately, this
season was overtly a parody but did come through with a lot of heart despite
seeming to wallow in bathos and irony. It took years as a murderous
henchwoman for Harley to become the therapist she'd never managed to be
honestly prior to meeting the Joker. Recommended. Lots of swearing and
blood, but nudity is censored. Price varies by format and store, also
available on streaming if you're willing to get HBOMax.
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).
Spy x Family vol 12: Viz - I've probably said it before, but it bears
repeating: the Anya-focused stories, especially Anya around just other kids,
bug the crap out of me. And that's something of a compliment, because I
think that the telepathic kid is one of the most realistic characters in the
whole story...it just makes it clear to me that I really should not raise
children. I'm fine around kids when they're someone else's responsibility,
but sooner or later they will act like Anya does here, and...ugh. Okay, they
probably wouldn't plot world domination, but no guarantees. Fortunately,
Anya is a fairly minor presence in this volume, it just feels like she's all
up in it. In fact, the first story is about Twilight's supervisor, the
elegant lady on the cover of this volume...who is a total slob at home. She
gets a dog so that she can meet Twilight at the dog park for an info drop,
and I get the impression that this is gonna be a Cat + Gamer situation going
forwards in terms of impacting her life in weird ways. The next big chunk of
story involves Yor getting the mistaken impression that having TOO happy a
home life is suspicious, so she keeps trying to manufacture drama with Loid
so she can be Normal. Very sitcom, but with the very real possibility of
death or serious injury, especially when Yuri mistakes his for actual
problems in the relationship. (No normal person would take away that
message, but this is Yuri Briar.) But the sitcom gets put on hold when an
emergency spy thing comes up for both Loid and Yuri...and Loid's somewhat
yandere coworker who still thinks she can get a Happily Ever After with him.
Yeah, this is gonna be a royal mess, isn't it? Recommended. $11.99/
$15.99Cn/#8.99UK Rated Older Teen (a lot of violence and a little innuendo).
The Great Cleric vol 10: Kodansha - The establishment of the new
Healers' Guild hall continues, including some rather overpowered dwarven
magic in the process. While the overall theme of "treating people decently
can get a surprising amount of loyalty from them" continues, Luciel gets
multiple warnings that he may be going too far in that direction, both in
terms of putting himself in too much risk and losing his ability to project
authority as he's seen as too soft. Despite having been in his thirties
before getting Isekai'ed, Luciel is really starting to feel that he's young
again, since the growing up he did the first time was suited for a completely
different society. A lot of his markers of maturity come across as naivete
or impracticality in a world of magic and monsters. However, it's not yet a
matter of "kindness coming back to bite him," just warnings to avoid going
too far down that path. Even if he's fated to change the world, he still has
to live in it until it changes. Recommended. $12.99/$16.99Cn, rated Older
Teen 16+ (more a case of mature topics like slavery than violence or sex
stuff)
Mr. Villain's Day Off vol 5: Square Enix Manga - Mostly more of the same
as in the last few volumes, although a few new characters from the alien
invasion force get introduced, and we find that his tail in Job Mode is
actually part of a symbiote he wears as a cloak (the claws on his shoulders
aren't just aesthetic, they're the cloak's hands). Some more of the oddities
of the aliens' plight come out as well, such as siblings who are forced to
timeshare a body because one of them is actually in hibernation awaiting the
colonization. Yeah, a lot of the alien invaders are monstrous in appearance
and personality, but it looks more and more like they just picked their
nastiest sorts to handle the nasty business of invasion and displacement of
humanity, not that they're any worse than humanity on average. Makes sense,
once you've committed to genocide as the only way to save your own people,
you don't want to put the plan in the hands of people who will vacillate
(although the General is finding he's not quite so dedicated to the plan as
he initially thought). Continues to be amusing and mostly light-hearted but
sometimes poignant "what people do between the fights in a super sentai
setting." Recommended. $14.99/$19.99Cn, rated Teen (some violence, implied
torture, the whole "genocide humanity" background thing)
The Way of the Househusband vol 12: Viz Media/Viz Signature - "We've
finally crossed the 100-chapter mark. Time doesn't progress in this manga,
whereas in the real world, my Shiba Inu and I are both puzzled by our aging."
- Kousuke Oono, back matter of this volume. I'd dispute the idea that time
doesn't progress at all, but there's definitely the "comic book time" thing
going on here, where no one really ages, even if they do have character
development, and characters enter and leave the story. But much like a
syndicated cartoon in the 1980s, the only real markers of time are character
introductions...once they're in the story, the episodes where they appear can
happen in almost any order. These slice of (odd) life stories don't have
much continuity beyond that, and some seasonal markers like the Halloween
trick or treating in this volume. Does it happen before or after a Christmas
story in another volume? Doesn't really matter, so long as it happens after
he's already met everyone in the story. There may be some other ordering
hints, such as the mob boss lady wearing the "I (heart) CATS" shirt means
this happens after the story in which she found she loves cats. All in all,
while very little is nailed down to a set of years, as Oono notes, there is
still the feeling of the passage of time, of character development. The
illusion of change is handled very well. Recommended. $14.99/$19.99Cn/
#10.99UK, rated Older Teen (themes of crime, some people being scary in
inappropriate situations)
Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 3:Viz Media/Viz Signature - There's been
hints the last two volumes about the Deep Reason Shigemoto founded the
company, that it's not just to try out new stuff in a nimble startup
company...there's a motive for NEEDING to try things that the big magical
girl companies won't. And while that doesn't quite get spelled out (pun not
intended, ow) this volume, a strong case could be made for at least one
theory based on what we see in the third main story of the volume. (The
first finishes off the fashionista magical girl story, the second is the
origin story of how the codemonkey joined Magilumiere, the third is a big
trade show where a dog and pony show goes awry.) There's also a strong case
made for three major schools of thought in magical girl work: just get the
job done efficiently, make sure everyone sees you smile and takes heart while
you do the job, and Magilumiere's "aesthetic" which is more about considering
the whole situation and the needs of the client beyond just "get rid of the
kaii monsters." It does also seem like the beginnings of ensh...er,
"platform decay" may be setting in among the leaders of the field, or even a
cavalier disregard for the possibility that they're just masking symptoms
while making things even worse in the long run. Still very much a "rookie
professional trying to find her place in a competitive field" story, but it
does seem to be slowly gearing up for the kind of apocalypse found in many
mahou shoujo stories. Like, what if the season finale of Ally McBeal
involved the possible destruction of the world by demons? But that's a
problem for future volumes, there's only the hints of foreshadowing right
now. The main threat at the moment is "can passion for one's work survive,
or must it be crushed in the name of doing the job well?" Recommended.
$14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Teen.
Delicious in Dungeon vol 8-10: Yen Press - Whoo. The Secrets of
Dungeons are revealed, as well as the reason by Dark Magic is so forbidden.
In fact, there's two layers of revelation, and I got the strong feeling that
even the deeper secrets were still not quite true. In the spirit of
revelation, the rest of the gang gets their motivations laid out by the end
of vol 10, mostly pretty noble but likely to pave the road to apocalypse. As
one does. Some of the recipes are a little goofy this time, with the writer
playing around with the idea a bit...perhaps this is also meant to mirror how
the dungeon itself is starting to change and get more dangerous and less
sensible. Recommended. $15.00/$19.50Cn each, rated Teen plus Language and
Violence (I guess the succubi in vol 9 don't bump it up to a Sexual
Situations add-on).
Expected next month: Easygoing Territory Defense vol 3 got pushed back
to September, Go Go Loser Ranger vol 11 shipped at the end of August and I
didn't get it read before the end of the month. Other expected September
releases include Chainsaw Man vol 16, Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 5, and Great
Cleric vol 11.
Other Trades:
Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, whatever. If it's bigger
than a "floppy" but not Manga, it goes here.
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures vol 5: DC/Webtoon - Unlike the currently
running season, which is basically one extended arc, this is still basically
one-offs and occasional two-parters, a good mix of humor and psychodrama
exploring why the heroes do what they do. Plus Wonder Woman meets Damian's
menagerie. I really like how Payne manages to both demonstrate consistent
characterization of everyone in this large cast and ALSO show how none of
them is just one thing. Sure, Damian is usually dour and impatient, but we
get to see other sides of him, such as how one of his classmates sees him
(which blows Steph and Tim's minds). This continues to be the best official
Batman of the 2020s. Strongly recommended. $14.99/$19.99Cn
Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp: IDW - The core premise of this
doesn't hold up to any scrutiny, even the characters at one point compare it
to a bad Saturday morning cartoon plot. (The protagonist was signed up for
summer art camp on an island in the woods, the camp got bought and turned
into a sports camp and none of the art students were informed, plus it's all
actually cover for Evil Corporate stuff...never mind the kaiju, the legal
system would stomp all over this place.) Ultimately, though, this is an
homage to or pastiche of All Monsters Attack, except that instead of the
protagonist dreaming of meeting Minilla, she stumbles across a portal to
Monster Island. Still has to run away from Kamacuras, though. No Gabara,
since the villains are practically leftover Captain Planet corporate goons
instead, and the biggest threat is having to run laps (and the protagonist
needs to use a cane, so it's not NOTHING). But this is otherwise very
late-Showa "friend to all children" stuff, none of the protagonist group
members is worried about Godzilla stomping them because they know he's a good
guy, etc. I bought this on a whim when I saw it on the New Graphic Novels
For Kids table at B&N...I don't really recommend it. The basic concepts are
promising, but I think the writer tried to "kiddie it down" too much. $12.99
The Eternals by Jack Kirby: the Complete Collection: Marvel - Okay, this
is old, but I'd never actually read Kirby's Eternals, and Ollie's had this
for $9.99, so I grabbed it. My first impression was that Kirby went HARD
into the mid-70s "Chariots of Fire" and Bermuda Triangle woo. I was
surprised no one talked about their biorhythms. My later realization
was...this isn't set in the Marvel Universe. It's a universe where Marvel is
a cultural cornerstone as fiction (everyone recognizes Ben Grimm, some
kinda-MIT students build a Hulk robot to be a sports mascot) but they're
definitely just fiction. Mind you, I was a little young to have caught how
their inclusion in the Marvel Universe was a retcon, I just started seeing
occasional Celestial guest appearances in the scattered books I read. Still,
it explains how I never felt the Eternals quite fit, and how Marvel never
seemed to know what to do with basically a city full of Superman-level
superhumans. Lots of concept flail. Anyway, it was worth the time spent
reading it, but I'm glad I got it cheap, because Kirby's writing tends to be
merely serviceable. Also, while they did seem to try to make the coloring
fit the modern printing better, it's always dicey when you're taking art done
for cheap 1970s printing and paper and transferring it to slick paper and
vibrant colors. Frankly, though, if you're the sort of Kirby fan who'd pay
$40 for the set, you already own it. But if you have an Ollie's nearby, it's
worth checking to see if they have any for $10. (Note, I also got the Power
Man Omnibus vol 2 at the same time, but it's basically the same stories as in
the second half of the Essentials, which I reviewed years ago, albeit in
color and with the lettercols intact.)
The Dusk: Ominous Press - This was a Kickstarter that I didn't notice at
the time, but since I did buy in on Ominous's Dreadstar Kickstarters I got
notice that this book was ready to fulfill and there were copies available to
preorder through (IIRC) Backerkit. It sounded interesting, so I ordered
one. This is basically one of those "Our Batman Is Different" stories that
misses the point that whatever Fresh New Take they think they have...Batman
has done that. It just got undone a few months or years later because of the
whole Illusion of Change thing. So, this Different Batman is a public
defender who inherited a mansion and a secret fortune when the father he
never knew died. Conveniently raised by a guy who ran a boxing gym, he was
ready to put all the superhero stuff in the basement to good use when he
found it. And just in time, since a crimelord known as El Tiburon (the
Shark) has started funding costumed villains for unknown purposes. The story
is okay, but it didn't grab me enough that I'll be getting the sequel if and
when it comes out. And as often happens with crowdfunded books, a big chunk
of the page count is bonus covers and pinups done for stretch goals. Mildly
recommended. $39.99.
Lackadaisy vol 1-2: Iron Circus Comics - A Kickstarter collecting the
two complete volumes of the webcomic that came out before the creators
switched to working on animation and the webcomic stopped updating on a minor
cliffhanger back in 2020. A volume 3 would be nice, but it seems kinda
unlikely at this point. Anyway, there's several qualitative differences
between the two volumes, starting with the fact that volume 2 is noticeably
thicker despite most of the bonus material and short strips being in volume
1. Also, while volume 1 is almost entirely sepiatone linework with some
shading, in volume 2 there's also grayscales and judicious use of red...not
full color, but much deeper contrast, darker shadows and brighter lights,
that sort of thing. All of the actual story strips can still be found on
lackadaisy.com, but most of the extra stuff (short strips, tutorials, process
bits, paintings) comes from their Patreon and other places and is not on the
main comics site. It's a good story of anthropomorphic cats in the later
days of speakeasies, where it's getting much more deadly serious and more
restrained operators (like the Lackadaisy club) are being squeezed out. The
books themselves are nice "coffee table" books, which means they might not
fit in well with any shelving you have set up for comics collections.
Recommended, volume 1 is $25 and volume 2 is $35.
Expected next month: Shock City by Alex Aaronovich (sequel to It's Not
Scary), with a chance of random crowdfunding fulfillments like this month.
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.)
My pull list grew noticeably this month, mostly thanks to the Gatchaman
line.
Fantastic Four #22: Marvel - Okay, now FF's involvement in the Vampire
plot makes more sense. Well, it does at the very end. Otherwise, it's more
"Reed sciences up ways to deal with vampires," plus some catching up on the
homestead back in Arizona in which Johnny figures out (with some help) how to
be more useful against vampires himself. An improvement over #21, to be
sure, but still only mildly recommended. $3.99
Vengeance of the Moon Knight #6-7 (of 8): Marvel - These two issues
happen across about the same timeframe, with #6 following Reese, Soldier, and
8-Ball in their attempts to rescue as many people as possible from the
vampire invasion, and #7 with Tigra, Hunter's Moon, and a special guest star
pulling a Hail Mary (well, Hail Khonshu for Hunter's Moon) play to try to
help turn the tide. The theme of #6 is, "It's worth it to save even one
person, even if they're mortal and will die eventually." A deliberately
small and individual scale in the midst of a global terror. #7 goes the
entirely other way and shoots the moon (pun intended) on a cosmic gamble,
whose outcome is seen at the end of #6. MacKay has generally done a good job
making it so I can follow what's happening without needing to read crossover
titles, so I presume #8 will have a montage of some sorts showing what
happens in Blood Hunt #5 and how it ties into the Final Page Reveal in FF
#22. Oh, and looks like this is an 8 issue series even if it never got
labeled one, another Moon Knight book by MacKay starts up in a couple
months. Both issues recommended. $4.99 each.
Venomverse Reborn #2 (of 4): Marvel - No, you didn't miss my review of
#1, this is the only one I'm getting, because it has an Adam Warren piece
that ties into his Venom: The End story. The framing sequence is that Eddie
Brock is apparently a cosmic End Of Time being like Franklin
Richards...frankly, I don't care enough to look up the details. It suffices
that he's setting up a series of short stories featuring alternate Venoms
throughout time, space, and realities. The lead story is Viking Age Venom,
didn't grab me even a little. Then there's a short Giarusso chibi-Marvel
story involving a cosmic basketball game, another meh. The Adam Warren piece
(with art by ChrisCross) shows one of the later skirmishes in the timeline of
Venom: The End, from the point of view of the machine intelligence trying to
trap "Team BioLife" in a single universe by essentially putting up a Barrier
that blocked interdimensional travel, only to find that it was the old "I'm
not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me," thing. Rather
talky and diagrammy, but moderately interesting. Overall, the issue is
mildly recommended and nothing about it inspires me to track down the other
issues or the big Venom War event that overlaps this series...well, except
for the Venom War: Fantastic Four tie-in that Warren's doing $4.99
My Adventures With Superman #2 (of 6): DC - While ostensibly this is
about Clark and the gang doing a little B&E into a secure facility in an
attempt to rescue Amazo (who didn't appear in season 2 that I can recall, and
is thus a safe dangler to deal with), it's really about the turf war between
Task Force X (particularly Deathstroke) and Checkmate's Team 7 (yes, the
Wildstorm Team 7, precursors to Gen13, albeit with massively changed origins
to fit into a world without Daemonites). A fairly forgettable issue, in part
because I kept feeling that anything that happened clearly had no impact on
season 2 so it can't be that memorable, yes? That's a common problem with
tie-in series when the canon is itself too tightly plotted. There's not the
looseness needed to let side stories breathe, and while they do continue some
of the subplot stuff like Jimmy rising to his millionaire position in S2 or
Lex Luthor's work for Waller, I can't shake the feeling that the resolution
will be that Amazo is destroyed or assumed destroyed and everyone lets the
status quo reset. Mildly recommended. $3.99
Gatchaman #1: Mad Cave - This is something of an odd nostalgia revival,
because most of the target audience (people my age) watched Battle of the
Planets, the Sandy Frank splice-job dub of Gatchaman. So it's a mix of
familiar and unfamiliar, giving the creators a bit of a heavier load than the
usual "GenX Nostalgia Comic" has to carry. (I watched the dubbed original
Gatchaman series on DVD in the 00s, so the lift isn't as heavy for me.)
Cullen Bunn writes this, and I think does a good job of balancing the
nostalgia market with the need to actually let people know that this isn't
quite what they may remember from childhood. It opens with a kinda-generic
Scientist at a press conference, confident that everything's going to go
fine, so of course a Galactor (Spector) monster attacks by the end of page
one. After a couple pages of establishing Oh Crap, the story cuts to...Beta
Flight, er, Beta Team. One of the big things this series is doing to not
just be retelling of old stories is that they're expanding the organization
to be more than just Dr. Nambu and five bird-themed Science Ninjas plus
faceless support personnel. The Beta Team are basically understudies,
training to be the next Science Ninja Team either to take Gatchaman's place
or add a team. So, Chekov's Gun means that at some point soon the main team
will be indisposed. For now, it provides some exposition targets to ask the
questions that the main team would look stupid asking. It also helps make
Nambu's group seem a little more on the ball...the Science Ninja Team might
be their best bet at stopping Galactor, but they're not stupid enough to have
only a single string to their bow. They also provide an interesting art
contrast...the show characters are very on-model, almost aggressively so at
times, but Beta Team aren't even in the same style. They seem to be in
something more like artist Chris Batista's own style. It tends to make the
Gatchaman team look more unreal and even supernatural as a result. As for
the main story? Not a lot to it, since this is heavy on exposition and
setup, with the first clash between God Phoenix and the mecha monster only
really taking the last six pages, ending on a cliffhanger. In TV terms, I
guess this issue covers up to the first commercial break. Obviously, a lot
is doing to depend on how well Bunn follows up, but it's still a solid
beginning. Recommended. $4.99, rated Teen, but doesn't really go much past
all ages this issue.
Gatchaman Ken: Deathmatch one-shot: Mad Cave - I didn't actually order
this, or even notice that it had been solicited, but my shop included
it...and to be honest, I probably would've ordered it if I'd noticed it in
Previews. Artist Mindy Lee doesn't worry too much about getting the faces
"right" compared to Batista, although her base style is more of a loose funky
anime style to start with. She does make sure Jen has the right eyes,
though. The premise is that the Science Ninja Team suspects Galactor of
being Up To Something regarding a fighting tournament, so Ken enters as a
fighter while the others infiltrate the workers and attendees. But, since
this is a solo one shot, the fighters all get taken off to a Galactor Base
and offered jobs in the organization...anyone with enough ethics to refuse
the offer gets hunted down by the rest. Rough job interview. Writer Tommy
Lee Edwards makes sure the reader knows that Gatchaman was a lot more violent
than Battle of the Planets, due to different censorship standards. Some
pretty brutal stuff goes on here as Ken tries to protect the other "no
thanks" fighters and get out alive. Or, you know, slaughter every other
living thing on the island as long as he's there. It's a self-contained
brutal story that does a very good job of establishing the tone of this
reboot. There's only a little actual blood shown, but a lot of people get to
intersect the paths of bullets. Recommended. $4.99, rated Teen and actually
earns it.
Gatchaman Galactor #1 (of 4): Mad Cave - Hey, it even has "#1 of 4" on
the cover, how retro! Okay, this starts with God Phoenix flying in to fight
the monster in Gatchaman #1, but there's no particular sense that the monster
might win in this view of it, and Berg Katse (Zoltar) turns off the monitor
in disgust before going before Leader X (Great Spirit) to take his latest
round of berating. He muses a bit on how Galactor took over a normal crime
syndicate from within, wiping out the original heads and turning it into an
engine of conquest. (In the original, there was no FTL travel, but a form of
psychic FTL communication that let Leader X give plans for weapons and stuff
to Galactor so that they could prepare Earth for the arrival of
slower-than-light colony ships. Similarly, Dr. Nambu got contacted by a Good
Alien and given the keys to the tech behind Gatchaman and God Phoenix.) In
the middle of reminiscing, Berg gets poisoned, survives, and spends the rest
of the issue using his skills at disguise to figure out who did it. The Who
that Did It is connected to Galactor's history, so that will likely be
further fleshed out in flashbacks and exposition over the rest of the
miniseries. Likewise, the secret of his mutant nature is mentioned here, but
not really explored beyond the fact he's a super-genius and very hard to
kill. (His ability to wear a disguise with his entire mask, cape, and
uniform UNDER it may be a mutant power too, or just alien tech.) Of course,
if Gatchaman is more brutal than G-Force, Berg Katse is even more of a stone
cold killer. Good start to an origin exploration, and even though I know
some of the secrets as yet unrevealed, I expect it'll be interesting to see
how Steve Orlando chooses to lay them out. Recommended. $4.99, rated Teen+
(again presumably for stuff that will happen in later issues, since it's not
even as violent and bloody as Deathmatch).
Vampirella #670: Dynamite - Y'know, if Priest were leaving the book (he
isn't, don't worry), this would work very well as a capstone. One more "what
if?" attempt at having a happy life for Good Lilith, it gets torpedoed
because this time loop is fueled by Shane's hatred and not by anything
rational or scientific, and then Vampirella finally has what she needs to end
things and stop the loop so she can go back to living forwards instead of in
a warped circle. Lots of characters get put on various metaphorical buses,
easy enough to leave it there and start completely fresh next issue. Of
course, the next issue box indicates we're going to get to see one of those
bus rides, so it's not as over as it might feel. :) The whole arc of
#666-670 almost definitely needs to be read in one sitting to really work, so
I suppose I recommend the upcoming trade collection rather than this issue in
particular. $4.99, rated Teen+ (for an awful lot of blood and mutilation and
some almost-nudity)
Expected next month: At least Fantastic Four #23-24, My Adventures With
Superman #3-4, Gatchaman #2-3, Power Rangers Infinity Quest, Vampirella #671,
Vengeance of the Moon Knight #8 (of 8, apparently), Ultraman x the Avengers
#1.
Dave Van Domelen, "We have every intention of waging a half-baked
attempt." - CEO Shigemoto, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 3
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