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From: dvandom@eyrie.org (Dave Van Domelen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Dave's Comics and Manga Capsules for November 2024
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2024 04:51:24 -0000 (UTC)
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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
	       Commercialism has really ruined Black Friday.

     Items of Note (strongly recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing this
month. 

     In this installment: Agatha All Along, Deadpool & Wolverine, Moon Girl
and Devil Dinosaur "The Gatekeeper" withdrawn episode, Cat + Gamer vol 6,
Cthulhu Cat, Heterogenia Linguistico vol 2, After God vol 1, Asadora! vol 8,
Primer: Clashing Colors, Star Trek Lower Decks Warp Your Own Way, The Little
Trashmaid vol 2, Fantastic Four #26, Venom War: Fantastic Four, Moon Knight
Fist of Khonshu #1, Ultraman x Avengers #2 (of 4), My Adventures With
Superman #5-6 (of 6), Gatchaman Galactor #2-3 (of 4), Gatchaman #4,
Vampirella #672, My Little Pony Classics Reimagined: the Odyssey. 


"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.

     Agatha All Along: Marvel/Disney+ - Technically this did end in October,
in that they wrapped up with two episodes on Halloween.  If you want a purely
linear story, this is not for you.  On the other hand, if you're cool with
nested flashbacks, people unstuck in time, and "here's what was actually
happening that you only saw from a deliberately obscured viewpoint five
episodes ago" kind of stuff, you'll do well with this series.  Appropriately
for the way it plays with time, this series looks both backwards at Agatha
Harkness's origins and life, and forwards in terms of setting up a potential
Phase Whenever They Get To It protagonist.  While not exactly a musical,
there's a lot of diegetic music, and it's pretty good.  Obscure Marvel magic
stuff from the comics is mined, although often just for the name
(e.g. Jennifer Kale has almost nothing at all in common with the version from
the comics), and generally ditching some of the more potentially racist
elements of some of the characters thus dug up.  (Marvel's magic scene in the
comics is full of Romani, but not by that name, and leaning hard into
stereotypes.)  On top of all that, it's sort of cleaning up a bit of the mess
left by Multiverse of Madness, which was not exactly the MCU's finest hour in
terms of character assassination.  Despite the heavy load it's lifting, the
series manages to be pretty self-contained, with flashbacks or other
references explaining anything viewers really NEED to know about WandaVision,
and mostly focusing on characters who are blank slates in the MCU and so the
writers don't assume the viewers know anything about 'em.  The plot threads
tie together nicely, and while the door is technically open to a season 2,
it's more likely that the followup will be someone else's series with Agatha
back to the supporting role.  Oh, and in terms of content warnings, there's a
fair amount of sometimes gruesome death, a few seconds of Agatha's bare butt,
and technically a Kill Your Gays but It's Complicated.  Recommended.
Currently only on streaming. 

     Deadpool & Wolverine: Marvel Studios - While previous Deadpool movies
have sort of hinted at Deadpool existing in the MCU, or at least a version of
it, this one explicitly brings Deadpool into the maddening multiverse with a
branch of the TVA being the inciting antagonist as well as the plot device
that lets Deadpool team up with Wolverine despite Wolverine being kinda dead.
And he does team up with the dead version of Wolverine, which is as nasty as
you might expect.  Seriously, if some of the deaths in Agatha All Along are a
bit much for you, what are you doing watching any Deadpool movie at all, much
less this one?  The stuff Deadpool does with Wolverine's remains isn't even
in the top five "disgusting abuse of the human form played for laughs" for
this movie.  The very darkly comedic tone is probably a big part of how they
got away with this being only a hard R and not NC-17 for "a bit much even for
Americans" violence.  All those warnings out of the way, I did find it funny
and it had some good character arcs as well as providing a second chance for
a lot of Marvel's abandoned ideas.  Deadpool is solidly part of the wider MCU
now, while also being safely on a variant timeline so other movies can ignore
his presence if they like.  Recommended with so, SO many warnings and
caveats.  Price varies by store and format, also on streaming. 

     Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: The Gatekeeper: Marvel - Okay, normally I
avoid reviewing things that I didn't get 100% legally, but this may or may
not ever be available legally.  Why?  Because despite Moon Girl already being
cancelled anyway at the end of the upcoming season, Disney decided to
exercise preemptive obedience to the political atmosphere and yank an episode
about trans athletes.  Naturally, copies of it were available within hours of
the news of the banning coming out, so I decided to grab one and try to
evaluate it on its merits, rather than on the controversy.  This is
definitely a Supporting Cast episode, with Luna herself mostly in a
cheerleading/moral support role and Devil as part of the comic relief B-plot.
There's some other callbacks to previous seasons, such as the running gag of
the supervillain plot device rummage sale, exposition courtesy of the
Beyonder, and reference to Brooklyn's nerdy little brother, so it does mesh
into the series rather than being just a side trip for a Very Special
Episode.  Oh, and it would have been so easy for a show that wallows in retro
70s cartoon tropes to have played this as a Very Special Episode too, but
they resisted the temptation.  There is sometimes a jarring tonal dissonance
between the comedy beats and Brooklyn's very real struggle to just be
herself, but this series does tend to do that kind of thing pretty often, so
I guess avoiding the MCU-style bathos would feel wrong.  If all the furor
results in it being put back on the schedule, it's definitely worth watching
legally.  Whether you find it worth watching through other means depends on
the firmness of your stance on piracy, and I'm not going to push anyone to
violate such a stance. 

     I did start reading the second Dreadnought book, but slammed hard into
some story elements that really rub me the wrong way, that I find difficult
to articulate well enough to explain why I haven't had problems with some
similar material (although it does feel a lot like why I couldn't keep going
with the Wayward Children books).  So I'm going to let it rest for now.  I
did read a "deleted scene" from the upcoming third book on the author's
Patreon that might give me the impetus to try again, but for now there's some
other stuff on my reading pile I'd rather get through first. 


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
expected to come out next 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). 

     Cat + Gamer vol 6: Dark Horse Manga - The "inner thoughts of the cats"
elements mostly retreat into end of chapter one-pager bits, which I think is
for the better.  Keeping the separation between what the human sees and what
the cats experience seems to work well, and breaking that barrier was giving
me some "meh" vibes.  In this volume Riko realizes that her kittens have
"leveled up" into adult cats, but for the most part the story is "she games,
cats do cat things, parallels are drawn" without any significant change to
the premise.  No new cats, no one else finds out she has cats, etc.  It's
cute and a fun read, but it doesn't seem to want to or even need to go
anywhere new right now.  Recommended unless you just Don't Get Cats.
$11.99/$15.99Cn  (Dark Horse doesn't generally put age ratings on their
manga, but this is pretty safely all-ages.) 

     Cthulhu Cat: Dark Horse Manga - A one-shot collecting a bunch of short
strips done in a cute and pusheen-ish style, but with the Great Old Ones
deciding to take on the forms of cats for their own inscrutable reasons.
Now, this is a cat manga that is definitely going somewhere, but not
somewhere you'd want to go in real life.  The creator admits to having come
to the Mythos fairly recently, and the treatment is a bit surface-level,
trying to cram as much into one volume as possible (including a bit near the
end where the author effectively admits that a bunch of names are being
tossed out with character designs despite there being no time to actually DO
anything with them).  Now, this is not the first time I've seen someone meld
together Mythos stuff and cute cats, that would be the defunct webcomic Hello
Cthulhu (Mythos in Sanrio style).  But this is a fun take on the mashup, and
it has a nicely "creepy but technically safe for kids" vibe to it, like
Rosamond from the Nate the Great books.  (Speaking of creepy, when I looked
up Nate the Great on Wikipedia I discovered that the series I read as a kid
in the 70s is STILL RUNNING.)  Recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn  (Again, no
ratings, and I suppose it could pass as All Ages?) 

     Heterogenia Linguistico vol 2: Yen Press - The protagonist and his
little band make their way up into the mountains, meeting a few more races
but perhaps more importantly learning of a role that seems to transcend
species and gender, the Ehyu.  As with almost everything in this series, it's
never fully explained (the theme is, after all, incomplete understanding),
but they seem to be a sort of shaman class, wandering wise people who seem to
have been released from any obligations to clan or race.  The cute little
half-werewolf girl who is the linguist's guide considers it to be a viable
"what I want to be when I grow up" choice, especially since she now sees the
protagonist as her father's successor (well, I'm presuming that...again, it's
not exactly made clear that the word she's using means her father's
profession rather than his biological role).  As an educator with a degree
focus in how people learn (albeit how they learn science, not language), I
find this a fascinating puzzle and modeling of the process of learning about
languages and the cultures that shape it.  You can't just learn about
language or just learn about culture, they're inextricably intertwined, and
Salt Seno is doing a very good job of showing this, even if the results can
be a little frustrating at times.  Recommended.  $15.00/$19.50Cn  Rated Teen,
plus Language (ironically) and Violence. 

     After God vol 1: Viz Media/Viz Signature - This is sort of "Neon Genesis
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