Dave's Capsules for July 2025

 

 

Archive of older reviews

Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing this month.

In this installment: Ironheart (Disney+), Ultraman: Along Came A Spider-Man vol 1, After God vol 5, Shy vol 5-6, Easygoing Territory Defense vol 5, Delicious in Dungeon the Adventurer's Bible Complete Edition, Atomic Robo and the Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E., The Mighty Onion and Guinea Pig Girl, How To Be A Mind Reaver vol 4, Marvel Knights: the World to Come #1 (of 6), Fantastic Four #32-33, Fantastic Four #1, Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #8-9. Vampirella #2, Gatchaman Only One Earth #4 (of 4), Gatchaman #9-10, Star Trek Lower Decks #7-9.

"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.

Keepin' it Riri.

Ironheart: Marvel/Disney+ - A six part miniseries dropped in two three-episode chunks feels almost like a "contractual burn-off" of episodes, and does not give me a lot of faith in the prospects of a sequel series.  And that's important, because this story ends on a huge cliffhanger in terms of character arc, and without a guaranteed Ironheart Season 2 I think I'm justified in worrying that Riri will next appear as the villain in someone else's story, much as happened to the Scarlet Witch.  That concern aside, the main theme of this series is making bad choices for what seem to be good reasons and then suffering the consequences.  Riri continues her ethically dubious ways and gets kicked out of MIT, which naturally results in her getting recruited by a heist crew that claims to only go after the bad guys.  That's not falling through the cracks, that's being punted into an abyss by the system...but given the racial politics involved, it's not actually surprising.  The only significant white male character in the story is doing just fine until he gets tangled up with the heist crew.  But that's pretty much just background radiation and a premise to put Riri into Situations, and the end of episode 6 kinda implies that some of this might have been engineered for that very purpose in-story as well.  Outside of all of that, the other significant hurdle Riri faces is her own PTSD, which wasn't really an issue in Black Panther 2, but since so many of her other coping mechanisms are falling apart in this series, it makes sense that this would crop back up.  All in all, leaving aside the Sword of Damocles issues, it was a well-told and powerful story and it actually made me kinda like the Bendis gary stu character who led the heist crew, and who benefited from years of slow backstory implantation from the comics.  Recommended.  Streaming on Disney+, may or may not get a disc release at some point.

Expected next month: Thunderbolts* was supposed to come out on disk the 29th, but I didn't see it at the one chain that still carries BluRay around here, so I guess I'll need to order it online.  (It's not on streaming yet.)

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.  I did skim Mad Cave's Lynx book on LibraryPass, but it felt really fake and forced compared to the actual 70s comics I've read lately, I didn't read enough to really feel right doing a review.  It does maintain the bit almost to the very end of the backmatter, though (Lynx is a fake 1970s classic comic from a novel).

 

Note, Isekai Samurai did show up on LibraryPass this month, a few weeks after the paper release, if you're curious and your library subscribes. 

 

Expected next month: Maybe the next Adventure Finders epilogue, Espinosa has been slowly working on it in between commissioned work.

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.

Ultraman: Along Came A Spider-Man vol 1: Marvel/Viz - Ugh.  Between the decent Ultraman/Avengers book and the fact that an experienced writer was doing this, I had reasonably high expectations, but this really feels like the author was writing down to little kids or otherwise had contempt for the intended audience. Avoid.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Teen so I guess it's just contempt.

 

After God vol 5: Viz - I feel like Sumi Eno had been "pantsing" the plot for the first few volumes and has finally decided why things are happening, because there's a lot of backstory revelations in this volume.  Why there's a god stuck in Maka, what the god did to earn that fate, why Maka's friend really killed herself, why the gods came to Earth in the first place, etc. While Maka shows up for more than a panel this time, she does spend rather a lot of the issue being puppeted around by one god or another, with more focus on the snake god again.  It has less the feel of an intentional ensemble cast and more the feel of the author just sort of bouncing to shiny new things.  The result is interesting enough to read, but it's more of a world-building story than a character-building story.  Mildly recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Older Teen (mainly body horror)

 

Shy vol 5-6: Yen Press - Yeah, I'm definitely going to catch up on the series at this point, but I'm going to limit how many volumes I read a month as I did with Delicious in Dungeon.  These two volumes kick off the longest arc so far (looks like it goes through at least vol 8, based on reading the backs of the future volumes), starting as Shy and her normie friend run into a ninja princess on the run from her overprotective guardian and intent on seeing the world outside her hidden village.  There's a cute moment where characters who have grown up with superheroes and monsters reacting with, "Ninjas don't really exist, do they?"  More rule-of-cool worldbuilding, as apparently ninjas have been around for a really long time and do have magic powers, but they're secret protectors of humanity rather than, you know, assassins for hire.  I guess Bukimi Miki likes Naruto or something.  After some "girls on the town" stuff, the latest villain plot kicks in, with a dome of darkness over Tokyo (Shy's home is in a bit of a podunk town, not in Tokyo).  She assembles a strike force out of the heroes we've seen so far to go into the dome along with the ninja (who is connected to the new villain), and the rest of volume 5 and all og volume 6 are basically slogging through darkened streets because they can't just fly to the center of it all, while encountering some of the other villains.  A highlight of volume 6 is the "I'm not a girl" cute Chinese hero guy fighting a villain who is super aggressive but everyone mistakes for a girl as well, pissing him off.  The two bishyboys have radically different ideas of what it means to be masculine, which makes for an interesting if occasionally himboriffic conflict.  Recommended.  $13.00/$17.00Cn, rated Teen LV (still no actual harsh language, which makes me wonder if in some future volume Mian Long or Doki break out some f-bombs in frustration)

 

Easygoing Territory Defense vol 5: Seven Seas - Time for the cost of success.  While Van continues to work on making his town better for everyone, the fact that an actual DRAGON got killed (this is one of those settings where dragons are very impressive) is starting to get around.  People still think they can take advantage of this little kid, but not only is he really a 30-something reincarnated, but he's won over enough powerful people by this point in the story that he's got champions at court...which he will definitely need.  However, this volume isn't entirely about Van finding out (or not YET finding out) that there are challenges a lot nastier than a dragon awaiting him, Sou Akaike makes the time to follow one of the tertiary characters for a bit and show how Lord Van's kindness and role modeling has started to have secondary effects on the people under his command, not just the ones important to his storyline.  Like Yuna (Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear) he really just wants to live a secure and comfortable life without being bothered, and like her he's finding that trying to arrange all that while also being a decent person is painting a huge target on his back.  And his front.  He has really strong walls around his town, but not around his heart, and so he keeps taking on more and more responsibility for other people.  Recommended.  $13.99/$17.99, rated Teen 13+ (mostly for mildly bawdy stuff and occasional decapitation of monsters)

Delicious in Dungeon: the Adventurer's Bible Complete Edition: Yen Press - The original guidebook only covered through part of volume 11, just as the endgame was about to start.  This goes all the way to the end, adding about 70 pages in the process.  The fold-out miniposter from the previous version is now the inside of the slipcover, and there's extensive gold foil on the slipcover so it's very hard to mistake the editions for each other.  Pretty exhaustive guide to characters, races, and setting, and noteworthy for having short manga stories attached to character profiles and in other relevant places, helping flesh out backstory that wouldn't fit neatly into the original story.  There's a bunch of extra comics at the end, including some post-volume-14 material.  If you can still find the previous version, it's not as spoilery and does get the core of things pretty well, but there's enough new material here to be worth rebuying if you already have the original.  Recommended.  $24.00/$31.50Cn (original was $18), rated Teen LNV.

Expected next month: Gunsmith Cats Omnibus vol 2 (due in late July, no way I'm getting it read before August), Spy x Family vol 14, Magilumiere Magical Girls vol 9, Way of the Househusband vol 14, Go Go Loser Ranger vol 14, Cat + Gamer vol 7 (might not arrive until September).  Plus a couple more Shy volumes, probably.

Other Trades:

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

Atomic Robo and the Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E: Tesladyne LLC - The latest Kickstarted collection of the Atomic Robo webcomic runs two plotlines.  In the serious one, Robo and the now-adult kid from the Science Affair FCBD story go to the old island HQ of Tesladyne to inventory some Dangerous Things, only to be attacked by embittered former employees who think they have a Better Way to Save The World (they're wrong).  In the silly plot, a trio of old Robo rogues show up to attack the new HQ, a plan made more chaotic and complicated by the fact that Doctor Dinosaur is technically an employee now and no one really knows what side he's on, least of all Doctor Dinosaur himself (not that he would ever admit that).  Some of the endgame is kinda hard to follow because it jumps between island, desert base, flashback to the island, aftermath at the desert base, and so forth.  Robo's physical condition is the only real clue to the timeline, some captions might have helped.  The bonus material is a simple TTRPG in which players take the roles of the three villains attacking the desert base, but employed for a different heist.  Recommended.  No price listed, and it has "The Vengeful Dead" on the spine by mistake, oops.  (They included a cover-up sticker with Kickstarter editions.)  Note, the next volume Kickstarter went live just before the end of the month.

 

Diary of a wimpy hero?

The Mighty Onion and Guinea Pig Girl: Little, Brown/Hachette - AKA The Mighty Onion vol 2.  Like the first volume, it's a mixture of diary-style entries and the comics produced by the two main characters, both together and with other collaborators.  This time the main conflict is driven by success, with the artist being hired to draw a legacy newspaper strip and finding she no longer has the time to devote to The Mighty Onion.  As in the first volume, the writer finds a new artist who turns out to be wildly inappropriate, and once again it looks like this may be the end of the Mighty Onion!  But then both creators make sanity checks (if barely) and reunite to produce their true labor of love (for the characters, not each other, I suspect they'd both react with an "ew" to the suggestion that their relationship is anything other than professional).  Mark Crilley gets to play around with a number of styles along the way, and include some photorealistic art (of the sort he does on YouTube) occasionally.  The plot is a bit sitcommy and I found it rough going in places because of my personal dislike for that style, but otherwise another solid YA book.  This series is a complement to Crilley's various "how to draw" books, being more about "how to collaborate" by example.  Recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn

 

How To Be A Mind Reaver vol 4: Antler Studio - Another Kickstarted collection of a webcomic. Unlike After God, this series started more as a bunch of isolated gags and character bits without a really strong plot thread, with the previous volume's extended flashbacks providing the start of an overall plot beyond "Cthu is too romantically oblivious to realize he's in a harem manga."  There's more of the generation-ago Savior of the Northlands plot here and there throughout this volume, but to the extent it has a main focus it's the combination of Rowan's origin story (she's the current main claimant on being the tsundere love interest for Cthu) and the injection of a more cosmic plotline set in motion by this volume's cover girl, the cosmic shipper Nyar (as in, Nyarlahotep, sort of...lots of characters in this series are basically Lovecraftian characters with a twist).  She claims to want to help Cthu make more friends, but the reader is repeatedly reminded that her real goal is likely not going to be healthy for anyone involved.  As in previous volumes, it's not just a collection of the webcomic, it includes full-page illustration with text on the facing page that flesh out some of the things implied by or briefly mentioned in the comic (most if not all of these went out to Patreon subscribers at the time, but did not go on the WebToons site).  Recommended.  No printed price.

 

Expected next month: Nefarious Nights of Willowweep Manor.

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.)

Marvel Knights: the World to Come #1 (of 6): Marvel - Marvel's really on an Alternate Futures kick.  This one, written by Priest and drawn by Quesada, jumps around in a future timeline, anywhere from a few years in the future to more than a generation, in a world where (as far as I can tell, not everything has been revealed yet) Wakanda is forced to conquer the world For Its Own Good.  At least it seems to be self-contained rather than anchoring an Event.  In short, while I personally have faith Priest is going somewhere interesting with this, there's not yet enough support for me to want to make a recommendation one way or another.  This might be a "wait for the trade" series.  $5.99, rated Teen+.

 

Fantastic Four #32-33: Marvel - Going with the more traditional Alternate Present idea, #32 looks at what might have happened in a world without the Fantastic Four, but where the Richards kids managed to laterally reincarnate into their alternate selves.  Just as each previous issue has been from the POV of one of the family, #32 is Valeria's turn...and #33 is HERBIE's turn, since Valeria obviously found a way to prevent the disastrous decision of #31 from being made (given that the Marvel Universe still exists, so not a spoiler).  At the end of #33, the FF is back and ready to continue to be a side note to the Doom event.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99 each, rated Teen.

 

Fantastic Four #1: Marvel - Time for new numbering, but plot-wise it's kinda a repeat of the last four issues of the previous numbering...FF go up against Emperor Doom, he swats them aside trivially, because he can only be beaten in an Event Comic, not in a tie-in.  Most of the issue involves the Four putting into action a contingency plan that they came up with off-panel some time back, North playing to his strengths of fantastical situations and scientific solutions, but of course the plan has a snag to it.  I kinda expect a Backup Plan That Was Devised Off-Panel to solve things...I'm kinda tired of the FF's book having to spend months explaining why they're not dealing with Doom, it's making me a lot more critical of the flaws in the resulting stories, and I don't enjoy the good parts as much.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen.

 

Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #8-9: Marvel - A nice pair of stories to read back to back, with the threat in #9 explicitly not something that Marc can beat using his usual methods (something he does in #8).  #8 explains the origin of Carver, Fairchild's enforcer with the magic sword that could kill a haunted building, and it ties into the Roxxon invasion of Vanaheim that I only barely remember from issues of Thor I was loaned with the instructions, "These are so bad, read them and agree with me."  Of course, hardly the most obscure or questionable bit of continuity that MacKay has mined for his Moon Knight stories.  Oh, and it's not just old and kinda-new stuff, apparently fairly recently Pym Particles were retconned to be really called Kirbons (of course), something Pym brings up while explaining his cure for Fairchild's magic drug.  On the one hand, of late I peer into the Marvel Universe through some fairly narrow windows...but on the other, I think I prefer it that way.  Anyway, these issues are recommended.  $3.99 each, rated Teen+.

  

Vampirella #2 (Legacy #677): Dynamite - So, we now get to the reason grown up Cicero came back in time to try to get his mother to surrender baby Cicero to Draculina.  Proximally, it's a sort of Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme deal, where in the future Vampirella wipes out evil and becomes absolute ruler of the world, but that's not even the bad part.  Most of this issue is adult Cicero explaining things to an increasingly "why is this my life?" Doc Chary, and in part making sure Chary and the reader know he's not exactly a good guy either...just the guy who got stuck trying to prevent the really bad timeline.  Recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen+ (CW: sexual assault)

 

Not an Apsalas in the
back, but close enough.

Gatchaman: Only One Earth #4 (of 4): Mad Cave - So, giant robots are pretty standard for Gatchaman, but it's rare that the good guys have one on their side too.  Of course, the Galactor giant robot is much bigger, so it's still basically the usual "hero vehicles dwarfed by villain robot monster" deal.  And because this is Gatchaman and not Battle of the Planets, the victory is bittersweet.  The Galactor plot was a bit on the Captain Planet side of things, unfortunately, feeling more like they've given up on conquest and are just trying to destroy all life instead, which feels like a big shift.  Mildly recommended.   $4.99, rated Teen+.

 

Gatchaman #9-10: Mad Cave - Eh, the main title continues to be the weakest of the Gatchaman offerings, IMO.  I've complained before about the "Beta Flight" subplot not really doing anything interesting, and now that it's the main plot it picked a fairly obvious direction (the two main paths forwards from this are likewise well-trod, it's gonna be a heavy lift to make it interesting to me after this).  The canonical "dark Gatchaman" teams have already shown up in the comics several times, and it was more effective in the Galactor miniseries.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99 each, rated Teen.

 

Star Trek Lower Decks #7-9: IDW - North is off the book, with Tim Sheridan taking over at #7.  #7-8 is a tale of Captain Freeman's younger days, the pretty much obligatory "mother was just as much of a free spirit as daughter before she had that stick rammed up her backside" kinda story.  The second arc manages to find a way to bring student loan debt into a story about the largely cash-less Federation.  It kinda works, but there's a lot of moving parts in the setup.  They're all mildly recommended, not sure I'm going to keep up with the book unless Sheridan gets better or gets replaced.  $4.99 each.

 

Expected next time: Probably another skip month for floppies.  By the end of August there might be enough in my folder to be worth sending.

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), is now old enough for some senior discounts, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.

 

"A MAN'S DUTY IS TO STRIVE TO BE CUTE!!" - Doki, the Wrathful Dragon, Shy vol 6