Path: ...!2.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!feeds.news.ox.ac.uk!news.ox.ac.uk!nntp-feed.chiark.greenend.org.uk!ewrotcd!news.eyrie.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: dvandom@eyrie.org (Dave Van Domelen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Dave's Comics and Manga Capsules for August 2024
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2024 16:46:07 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Coherent Comics UnInc
Message-ID: <vaq8kf$8ak$1@hope.eyrie.org>
Injection-Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2024 16:46:07 -0000 (UTC)
Injection-Info: hope.eyrie.org;
	logging-data="8532"; mail-complaints-to="news@eyrie.org"
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test77 (Sep 1, 2010)
Originator: dvandom@eyrie.org (Dave Van Domelen)
Bytes: 31653
Lines: 472

                    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
========== REMAINDER OF ARTICLE TRUNCATED ==========