Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing this month.
In this installment: Thunderbolts*, Eyes of Wakanda, Adventure Finders Epilogue: Jolfe, Gunsmith Cats Omnibus vol 2, Cat + Crazy vol 1, Go! Go! Loser Ranger! vol 14, Wolf's Daughter: A Werewolf's Tale vol 1, Spy x Family vol 14, The Way of the Househusband vol 14, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 9, Shy vol 7-8, Infini-T Force vol 1, The Nefarious Nights of Willowweep Manor
"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.
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| Dreams really can come true. |
Eyes of Wakanda: Marvel/Disney+ - A four episode miniseries looking at the titular eyes of Wakanda, the Hatut Zeraze (Dogs of War), who make sure Wakanda's dangerous technology and vibranium don't make it out into the world. The first episode is set against the backdrop of the Bronze Age Collapse, implying that the misused tech is backing the Sea Peoples. The second is set during the Trojan War, with the protagonist of the first ep being an old woman who now assigns missions. Then a big jump to some indeterminate time later (probably around 1500AD, but the exact date is not mentioned on-screen) for a conflict in China, and then the last episode helps set up why the Hatut Zeraze failed to recover the artifact that Killmonger found early in the Black Panther movie. The art is stylized and kinetic, the heist-like stories in most of the episodes, although sometimes they lean a little too hard on Rule of Cool, such as the first episode having a Japanese warrior with gear about two thousand years ahead of its time (he has no particular lines and not much screen time, which makes me wonder if the animators put him in rather than the scriptwriter). A common theme throughout the four episodes seems to be that sometimes breaking the rules is good, sometimes it's very bad, but success in the end will get you a lot of slack. Note, every episode includes Special Thanks to the writers and artists considered to have come up with the core concepts, regardless of whether they worked on the versions in use. For instance, Priest gets thanked in every episode because he introduced the Hatut Zeraze and Dora Milaje, even though the later developments by other writers more strongly affect the MCU versions. Roy Thomas gets thanked for a character appearing in episode 3, even though almost everything about the one appearing in this series contradicts Thomas's established stuff. Oh, and one of the Writers We Don't Talk About gets thanked in the final episode, because he created the big world-beater threat used there. Problematic stuff aside, it was an entertaining watch, even if sometimes it felt like they were trying to Do History without actually researching any. Recommended. Streaming for now, I dunno if it'll ever be released on disc.
Adventure Finders Epilogue: Jolfe: Patreon.com - While the Shire wasn't Scoured too badly, Jolfe's epilogue focuses on how little real impact the heroes have had on society. Yes, a few individual women are respected (or feared), and most people are cool with the adventure finding crew settling down in Clari and Jolfe's hometown, that doesn't extend to things like letting a woman (no matter how well-connected) be more than an observer in the town council, and while Jolfe gets to be part of the local militia, Clari's not exactly welcome in an armed role despite the fact she could beat up the entire militia using a fish. (It's a rather big fish, to be fair.) As much wish-fulfillment there has been along the way, even saving the world isn't enough to change it right away. The overall tone is happy, as several characters have found or returned to family, but there's a wistful tinge to it. Recommended. $2/month unlocks the entire series.
Gunsmith Cats Omnibus vol 2: Dark Horse - I only got about halfway through before giving up on this and the series in general. Maybe had I read this when it first came out thirty years ago I'd have been more into it, but frankly the whole "evil lesbian domme who drugs and sexually abuses Rally" thing puts me off these days. Especially since she doesn't even get killed off like most antagonists in this book, so there's a chance she'll be back. Even if she never did come back, I do not like at all the fact Sonoda left the option open. A pity, because when the story's not being extremely skeevy there's some good stuff here and there, but...nope. Avoid. $29.99/$39.99Cn, parental advisory sticker and a lot of nudity and the aforementioned SA.
Expected next month: Superman will probably be on disc, it's already out on "pay physical media prices for a digital-only copy that could vanish whenever the rights-owners decide to yank it" format.
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.
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.
Adventure Finders Epilogue: Jolfe: Patreon.com - While the Shire wasn't Scoured too badly, Jolfe's epilogue focuses on how little real impact the heroes have had on society. Yes, a few individual women are respected (or feared), and most people are cool with the adventure finding crew settling down in Clari and Jolfe's hometown, that doesn't extend to things like letting a woman (no matter how well-connected) be more than an observer in the town council, and while Jolfe gets to be part of the local militia, Clari's not exactly welcome in an armed role despite the fact she could beat up the entire militia using a fish. (It's a rather big fish, to be fair.) As much wish-fulfillment there has been along the way, even saving the world isn't enough to change it right away. The overall tone is happy, as several characters have found or returned to family, but there's a wistful tinge to it. Recommended. $2/month unlocks the entire series.
A couple of the books below I first read on LibraryPass (Cat + Crazy, Infini-T Force), but paper copies arrived in the mail in time to make the cut for August.
Expected next month: As usual, I dunno. The final Adventure Finders epilogue might hit, but Espinosa has a lot of outside paying work these days, which is good.
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.
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| Looking cute is how they GET you. |
Go! Go! Loser Ranger! vol 14: Kodansha - After 25 chapters, the Three-Way Melee finally wraps up, but it's not the end of the story...just an opportunity to dig deeper into the corruption of the Ranger Force. I suspect that the end of the Deathmecia fight was originally planned to be a possible series end, but even a couple volumes ago the groundwork was being laid for the longer term plot...in a not terribly shocking twist, the Ranger Force is not merely a bunch of bullies clinging to power in a world that technically no longer needs them (which I actually prefer to all the "the monsters are gone and now the Rangers need to get real jobs" stories out there), it's looking more like we might have a full on Kyubey situation here. Or maybe 3/4 of a Kyubey. Not a great place to be if you're a monster, anyway. I did quite like that Fighter D spent a big chunk of the climax in his back cover pose (mostly, he lost part of a leg to a Divine Weapon last volume). Recommended. $10.99/$14.99Cn, rated Older Teen 16+ (lots of black and white blood and trauma).
Wolf's Daughter: A Werewolf's Tale vol 1: Seven Seas - This is one of those books I saw on the upcoming releases lists and thought, "Interesting, but I'll wait to see if it's on the shelf." The week and month of its scheduled release, nothing, so I passed on. But this month I did see it on the shelf, so picked it up. Structurally, this is a pretty standard "Young woman on the cusp of adulthood is torn between a nice guy and the jerk bad boy who she finds inexplicably compelling," romantic angle (it's not a triangle unless the guys are into each other too, and Seven Seas is way more into yuri than yaoi so I don't think that'll happen). However, as the title states, she's a werewolf. And both guys are werewolves. And in the mythology of the series, there are two tribes of werewolves descended from the first "messengers of the gods," with the nice guy being from the more socially integrated rural tribe and the jerk being from the literal lone wolf mountain tribe...they hate each other on an institutional level. And Tsukina (yes, tsuki means moon) isn't part of either clan. The nice guy is named Hayate, which is a legendary and loyal dog's name. The jerk's name has not been revealed yet, but I'd bet it has "lone wolf" symbolism. So, yeah, there's the usual romance tropes available, but it's also as if Romeo and Juliet faked their deaths, then gave their kid up for adoption in another city, only to have the kid roll into Verona and immediately get clocked as being half-Montague and half-Capulet. So...speaking as someone who doesn't generally read romance, this has my interest. Recommended. $13.99/$17.99Cn, rated Teen 13+ (romantic themes, suggestion but not depiction of bad things that could happen to a girl on her own).
Spy x Family vol 14: Viz Media/Shonen Jump - With a main plot that's on a clock and a series that has gotten very popular, the writer needs to find ways to stretch things out. The first academic term finally ends this volume, a pacing worthy of Dumbing of Age, but it's been loaded with side stories and flashbacks. This volume demonstrates this, because more than half the pagecount delves into the shared history of two of the Respectable Old People in the story (elegant cover character Howard Henderson, and the attendant of the Blackbells usually seen with Anya's friend Becky, Martha Marriot). In a world that is sort of like the 1950s/60s Cold War as seen in spy movies, Howard and Martha's story starts before this world's version of World War One. Lots of parallels to Loid's own WWII-ish flashbacks. On the one hand, the focus is mostly off the characters who drew me into the series. On the other, I appreciate taking a joke character like Mr. Elegant and giving him depth and something more than a catchphrase to define him. Recommended. $11.99/$15.99Cn, rated Older Teen (a lot of war stuff).
The Way of the Househusband vol 14: Viz Media - I keep dreading the point at which the joke has been played out, it doesn't seem like it should've made it even THIS far without starting to sputter out. And there's been a few volumes that were a little weaker, I admit. But the worldbuilding just keeps on going, giving Tatsu more foils and giving more depth to the ones he has. Even relatively one-note characters at least get a second partial note here and there, and Tatsu himself is not forced to carry the incongruity humor all by his lonesome, as sometimes he gets to be the one boggling at someone else's "gangster behavior that is not appropriate here." The two major new (likely recurring) characters this volume are the ghost of Tatsu's original boss, and Ms. Torii's new cat (we've already had some bonus strips where Tatsu's pet cat can communicate in thought bubbles, now there's another cat for him to talk to). Recommended. $14.99/$19.99Cn, rated Older Teen (there's rather a lot of blood in the cat adoption chapter).
Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 9: Viz Media - Most of this volume is taken up by the big fight against the artificially-enhanced super-Kaii (a Kaii-ju, if you will), interspersed with a focus on the flattened-affect ace magical girl from AST and flashbacks into why she's that way. In the wake of last volume establishing who the actual bad guys were, and who was just being manipulated or used by them, this volume gives us more reason to sympathize with the unwitting pawns who might eventually come around to being on the right side eventually. This, of course, makes the end of the volume a perfect time for a big reversal. Recommended. $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Teen for fantasy monsters.
Shy vol 7-8: Yen Press - This is all part of the big Tokyo "dome of darkness" battle, but with plenty of flashbacks, including "Shy enters someone's memories" to get a sort of diegetic flashback. The strong emphasis on fighting does make for weaker chapters because Bukimi Miki's action art is hard to decipher at times. Overinked, shooting for dynamic but ending up with overly busy. It's the sort of art that could be saved by color, so you could more easily tell who was who and what was what, the actual layouts are generally competent but then drowned in SFX lines. This does make the quieter moments stand out for their clarity, but there's just too much of the manga version of "unsteadycam" in the fights, especially when all the Secret Ninja Arts come out and the panel fills with wind or water or whatever. The story is interesting, some good psychological/emotional stuff in there, it's just kinda tedious to wade through the fight scenes sometimes. Mildly recommended. $13.00/$17.00Cn each, rated Teen LV and I'm still not seeing why it gets a language warning. Plenty of (somewhat hard to follow) violence, though.
Infini-T Force vol 1: Nakama Press/Mad Cave Studios - Like Wolf's Daughter, this was one of those "I'll see if it shows up on the shelf" books that interested me in principle, but not enough to just preorder. Unlike Wolf's Daughter, it has yet to actually hit shelves locally, but as noted above it did make it to LibraryPass a few months after it got to shelves (and volume 2 went on LibraryPass a week later, but I'll go ahead and leave that for next month). High school student Emi lives alone in an apartment building which she also effectively manages for her parents (the dialogue says they're just out of town most of the time, but that sure looked like a shrine to the departed in one scene). She gets a mysterious oversized "Possibility Pencil" in the mail and finds that things she draws with it becomes real, sort of a Harold and the Purple Crayon, if Harold was a high school girl with a tendency to show up on panel undressed or nearly so. Yeah, if I have a significant qualm about this book, it's that the creative team seems to be aiming at a "lolicon" fan base a little. Nothing that would require censor bars for US publication, but...a definite pervy male gaze thing going on. At least she doesn't get that from any of the other characters, just the artist. Anyway, shortly after getting the pencil, she ends up in the middle of a robbery that's rapidly going wrong, and in desperation wishes for heroes, drawing four heroes as if the pencil is doing the drawing for her. And Ken the Eagle, Gatchaman himself shows up to save the day (hence Mad Cave's involvement in this translation). The rest of the volume has the three others showing up, although there's some weird causality going on since one of the heroes turns out to have been a guy who's lived in Emi's building since before she got the pencil. The other heroes are also of 1970s vintage: Casshern (spelled Casshan here), Tekkaman, and the only one I hadn't heard of before, Hurricane Polymer (spelled Polimar here...I wonder if there were licensing issues with the accepted spellings). It's basically a reverse isekai situation, and when Emi tries to send Casshern home the portal she manages to draw is blocked by a robot monster thing which may or may not be one of Tekkaman's enemies and seems to be playing timeline cop. All four are heroes, and they have rather different ideas of what that means. Each also manages to find an excuse to be in Emi's civilian life (although the neighbor already had an excuse), although Emi keeps having to insist to her friends that the latest guy hanging around is not her boyfriend either. (Casshern still looks about her age despite being pulled from a time decades after the end of his war, so it's not quite as scandalous as when her friends think she's dating Ken.) There's a lot of plot elements tossed around in this volume, and there could be multiple mysterious foes or a single one with a lot of agents, and there's factionalism among the heroes as well. (I dunno if Polymer/Polimar was originally supposed to be in the Gatchaman setting, but in this telling they were, and while they hadn't met before Emi drew them to her world, they knew of each other and did not think highly of each other.) Lots of unanswered questions, not least being "why would a high school girl in the 21st Century be summing a bunch of 1970s anime heroes?" Still, despite the occasional creep factor, I'm interested enough to give it another volume. Mildly recommended. $10.99/$14.99Cn, rated Teen 13+.
Expected next month: Probably getting caught up on Shy, maybe another Infini-T Force, Cat + Gamer vol 8, Kaiju No. 8 vol 14, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear vol 12, Tank Chair vol 5, After God vol 6.
Other Trades:
Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, whatever. If it's bigger than a "floppy" but not Manga, it goes here.
Trade paperbacks, collections, graphic novels, whatever. If it's bigger than a "floppy" but not Manga, it goes here.
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| The chicken may be important. Or not. |
Expected next month: Maybe the Power Fantasy vol 2, still not sure I want to get that. Watson's Sketchbook vol 1-2 for sure. Punderworld vol 2 might come out in time for the September reviews.
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.)
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.)
Skip month, as expected.
Expected next time: Fantastic Four #2, Marvel Knights the World To Come #2 (of 6), Gatchaman #11, Gatchaman: Joe Bloodlines, Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #10-11, Sonja Reborn #1, Star Trek Lower Decks #10, Vampirella #3-4. (Edited to reflect actual shipment.)
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), wrote a 30k-word TTRPG in a week and will probably never play it, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.
"That's, uh...a lotta blood. You sure you're okay?!" - Tatsu, The Way of the Househusband vol 14
Dave's Capsules for August 2025
Reviewed by Dvandom
on
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Rating:
Reviewed by Dvandom
on
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Rating:
