Dave's Capsules for September 2025

Archive of older reviews

Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing this month, although Superman (2025) comes close.

In this installment: Superman (2025), Shy vol 9-10, Tank Chair vol 5, Kaiju No. 8 vol 14, After God vol 6, Cat + Gamer vol 8, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear vol 12, Watson's Sketchbooks vol 1-2, Stardust the Super Wizard Anthology, Fantastic Four (2025) #2, The World To Come #2 (of 6), Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #10-11, Sonja Reborn #1 (of 6), Vampirella #3-4, Star Trek Lower Decks #10, Gatchaman - Joe: Bloodline one-shot, Gatchaman #11.

"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.

"I REALLY hate that hashtag."

Superman (2025): DC Studios - The good: it's bright and hopeful, it's not Yet Another Origin story, the world has plenty of metahumans in it already, the viewer is assumed to have a basic knowledge of Superman, the story builds on the elements that are more flexible so we don't automatically know where things are going this time, emphasis on saving lives rather than ending them, Nathan Fillion manages to make Guy...Guy without flanderizing him, the "Justice Gang" name is treated with precisely the respect it deserves, lots of deep continuity cut easter eggs but no actual requirement that viewers get the references.  The not-so-good: a bit too much Marvel-style bathos undercutting dramatic moments (overshooting the reaction to grimdark IMO), the casual swearing from some characters felt off (I think Superman swore more than Guy Gardner).  The humor was generally funny, it just sometimes didn't need to be there.  Still, overall, I quite enjoyed this and hope subsequent DCCU movies can hover in this general vicinity (if perhaps a little less undercutting of dramatic moments, that stuff is best kept a sometimes thing).  Recommended.  Price varies by format and store, also available on streaming.  Rated PG-13 for violence and rather more swearing than a PG movie could get away with.

Expected next month: Fantastic Four: First Steps is due out on disc in mid-October.  I may also decide to review Please Don't Tell My Parents I Bought Superpowers, which I'm in the process of reading.

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.

Skimmed a few things on LibraryPass, but nothing interested me enough to even write a "don't bother" review.

 

Expected next month: The final Adventure Finders epilogue is almost finished, might come out next month.

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.

Shy vol 9-10: Yen Press - Whew.  The big FX-intensive ninja technique battles really need color or a cleaner style than creator Bukimi Miki has, but fortunately there's plenty of important non-battle scenes as the battle for Tokyo wraps up, including some very touching backstory bits that play to Bukimi's strengths as a writer and artist.  The day is saved by about the 1/3 point of volume 9, then the next 1/3 is epilogue and filling in bits and pieces that didn't come out in previous flashbacks, followed by moving on to the next order of business: dealing with a captured enemy and figuring out what's next.  Volume 10 takes a break from the big heavy Amarariruku arc, with some self-contained stories that expand both Shy's personal life and her professional world and to some extent examine the impact of her success in Tokyo.  While she's been slowly getting over her social anxiety, being credited as leading the battle for Tokyo pushes her way more into the spotlight than she's comfortable with, thus helping keep her codename relevant.  Shy's life seems to be like the Peter Principle, but for extroversion rather than competence...she keeps being pushed into situations outside her comfort zone, and while she technically has peers to lean on, she doesn't regularly have powered friends her own age to lean on for support.  Her non-powered friends help, of course, but they don't really have any experience with unwanted fame, while her professional peers are largely past any social anxiety they might have had.  The cover character for volume 10 may help, or may make things worse, the French hero who is about the same age as Shy but at least so far seems to be extremely extroverted (their gender is given as "what's your preference?" in a profile bit...not a shapeshifter, just aggressively gender nonconforming and ambiguous, standing out even in a book with "super-powered David Bowie" and two guys who repeatedly get mistaken for being girls).  The worldbuilding still feels seat-of-the-pants, but it's starting to gel a little better.  The ghost story in volume 10 probably wouldn't have felt right in the first few volumes, because it depended a lot on the ambiguity of "maybe ghosts are real, but is this a ghost?" that requires having some level of knowledge about the setting.  After the ninja stuff in vol 6-9, ghosts are certainly in that plausible but not confirmed range.  Recommended.  $13.00/$17.00Cn, rated Teen LV.

Trust me, the title
character is on the cover.

Tank Chair vol 5: Kodansha - The cover of this volume leans so hard into Cute Anime Girl tropes that I had to double-check that there wasn't a new artist...but it just turns out that's how Nagi's little sister Shizuka is now (and there's an in-story reason for the maid outfit).  With Nagi having been in a coma for several years, Yuuri (the focus of volume 4) and Shizuka now have the concept of a plan to revive him, even though it might also revive Sensei, the amoral immortal behind the School on Guicheng Island.  We get caught up on some of the other shuffling of alliances that have occurred in the last few years, and then it's time to beat the city like a pinata until a solution falls out.  I mean, play to your strengths, right?  This volume's iteration of the eponymous tank chair is basically a cryostorage unit holding Nagi, which can configure into various combat-useful shapes to keep him close while ultraviolence commences (at one point, it turns into a giant hammer, for instance).  This keeps up with the running theme that being around "murderous intent" is helpful to Nagi's recovery, it's just Yuuri that's wearing the mask (well, a slightly cuter version) this time.  Of course, since Wisdom is almost everyone's dump stat, violence tends to be the solution to most problems as well as the cause of most problems.  Nagi might be the most sensible person in this volume, and only by virtue of being in a coma and therefore unable to make bad choices.  Speaking of choices, I definitely get the feeling that Manabu Yashiro originally planned on just a three volume series, but then decided to use the success of the series to keep going rather than write something else (or even write a series set in this world but not involving Nagi).  Still, while one of the characters even lampshades the "you're undoing the resolution of the story" thing, it's working so far.  I think part of why it does is that, unlike when Chainsaw Man shifted to focus on a new character, Nagi never really was the main character...the series has always been about the people around him, like Shizuka or Doc Radio, and Yuuri's digression didn't drag on past its welcome, since Shizuka showed up at the end of vol 4.  So, the transition was pulled off.  Recommended if you don't mind the occasional splattergore in black and white or the very casual attitude towards murdering.  These are protagonists, not good people.  $13.99/$18.99Cn, rated Teen 16+ for massive amounts of violence, including cannibalism.

Kaiju No. 8 vol 14: Viz Media - Other than a few fairly short flashbacks (mostly training-related), this is a volume-long slugfest between Kafka and the enigmatic Number 9, with occasional help from other members of the anti-Kaiju forces (notably Kafka's childhood friend captain Mina Ashiro).  This is probably the climax of the whole arc, but enough mysteries have been laid out along the way that they could still really destroy Number 9 for good (9 doesn't seem to think that's gonna happen, though) and still have grist for the story, showing a bit more evidence of long-term plotting on Naoya Matsumoto's part than in the two manga preceding this review.  Matsumoto is also pretty good at keeping the action clear despite being high-energy, with clean linework and characters who are mostly distinct enough to avoid problems of the "who's that?" variety (not immune to it, but the characters who suffer from some of the samey appearances don't draw focus this volume).  Even if there's more fighting to come after the volume-ending Big Damn Attack, this was definitely the emotional climax of the "Kafka and Mina reunite after years apart" plotline.  I'd say strongly recommended for the emotional payoff, but you really need to have read the series so far in order for that to really impact.  It's probably a decent read if you actually start here, especially if you just like kaiju big battles, so generally recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99Cn, rated Teen (fantasy violence)

After God vol 6: Viz Media - More worldbuilding, but between the highly skewed perspectives of the various gods and the chance at least one of the people involved in the conversation was bluffing, it's hard to tell what's truth and what's just someone's hallucination.  With the gods, hallucinations can become reality, notably in Volov's house where much of last volume and almost all of this volume take place.  A central theme of this volume is, "Can you become better?  And what does better even mean?"  The gods have become much more sympathetic, if still alien, characters during the time at Volov's place.  They may not think like humans do, but they still feel pain and want the pain to go away.  They still make bad choices out of love or fear, and they are as much products of human influence as they are utterly inhuman.  Alura, the god in Waka's body, has desires that are insane, but they're comprehensibly insane.  She wants Waka to go back to being useful for achieving those designs, but as Waka has become a better person since moving in with the IPO taskforce, she's become worse as a vessel for Alura.  Obikawa is still mercurial and sees life far differently than we do, but he tries to be compassionate to a friend, even if he's angry at the choices his friend made.  Tokinaga, the taskforce's veterinarian and the man who brought Waka in, may or may not be more than he lets on...is he bluffing to try to save Waka, or has be been keeping secrets the whole time because he knows how to destroy the gods but would rather find common ground between humanity and IPOs (who by their own accounting, are over 700 million years old, predating the Cambrian Explosion) and share the world rather than one species trying to exterminate the other.  What started as a monster-fighting story with comic relief from cats has definitely taken a turn into a lot of philosophical struggling (with comic relief from cats).  Recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Older Teen (body horror, gore, vore)

Cat + Gamer vol 8 (of 8): Dark Horse Manga - Now for a break from all the ultraviolence and deep questions of life, but keep the cats.  I was wondering whether running two books at once would cause problems for creator Wataru Nadatani, but it turns out that Cat + Crazy is more of a followup than a simultaneous thing, as the story of Riko and her cats wraps up this volume (they're fine, it's more of a "and that's how I got where I am now" ending).  It does make sense for this to not go on too long, since there's only so much for Riko to learn about having cats, and the focus really has been more on the learning than on the hijinks that result.  Eventually either Riko would have to seem excessively clueless, or the focus would drift to general "adorable cat does cat thing" stuff...while that certainly has its place, it would represent a change in the series that might not have legs.  So, instead, at about the 2/3 mark a plot complication comes up: the company is moving to a different city, too far for a practical commute, but finding housing that permits cats is hard.  The reason she hadn't been fretting about it the entire series is plausible as well...back when it was announced months before volume 1, she just figured she'd take company housing (which doesn't allow pets) and go on with life, so she put it from her mind.  Now she has a couple months to deal with a looming problem, and it's time for her to decide what her life needs to be.  A nice bit of "normal stakes" drama to close out on, and to inspire and justify the choice she makes.  So, on to Cat + Crazy, where the stakes promise to be a bit weirder.  Recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn, all ages.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear vol 12: Seven Seas Entertainment - Almost no fighting at all this volume, it's all about the "cozy homesteading game" aspect of things.  Perfecting a new dessert recipe, helping set up new businesses, getting invited to a noble's birthday party, nothing life or death.  Well, maybe the last one, because the invite comes from a friend who is revealed to live in a bit of a political snakepit, promising challenges next volume that Yuna can't just blow up with fireballs or slice to pieces with her fancy new mithril knives.  I've repeatedly pointed out that despite her massively OP gear, Yuna's real power is that she treats people decently regardless of their class or background...but treating people decently isn't necessarily going to work as well in the depths of court intrigue...the Kraken was nothin', now she's facing a real challenge!  Recommended. $13.99/$17.99Cn rated Teen 13+ but that seems to be more of a series rating as this volume has almost no violence at all (mostly against training dummies and one very short exchange of punches) and no or very little innuendo.

Expected next month: Dinosaur Sanctuary vol 7, Chainsaw Man vol 19, I'm in Love with the Villainess vol 9.  Since next month is looking slim, I'll go ahead and catch up on Infini-T Force (this month had enough to not need to get more stuff).

Other Trades:

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

Watson's Sketchbook vol 1-2: Self-Published - As Ostertag admits herself, the idea of interpreting the original Holmes stories through a gay lens is not exactly new, but she does bring some receipts in terms of the slang of the era and Doyle's own statements about how the stories as Watson related them were often changed to protect reputations or just give more satisfying resolutions to cases that really ended in a muddle.  These volumes started on Patreon and Tumblr, a mix of character and situation sketches from the stories (which she started reading in 2023) and a sort of "here's what really happened" and "here's what happened between the scenes" comics.  There is a definite progression towards more coherent fanon crafting stories after a more scattered start, and the tone settles down fairly quickly into less of an illustration of the canon and more of a sketching out what was implied or obfuscated, things that a friend of Oscar Wilde like Doyle might have meant but dared not say outright.  (I don't get the impression that we're expected to think Doyle himself was gay, just that he was what we'd call an ally these days, trying to cast people like Wilde's crowd in a more positive light.)  Particularly clever was how she explained the sudden marriage of John and Mary, and her equally sudden departure from the stories soon after Holmes returned from the presumed-dead...John and Mary were bearding for each other, but when Holmes came back it became clear that the arrangement had never sat well with Holmes, so Mary followed her lady love to America.  Now, the reader is warned that these are best read as a companion to reading the original Doyle stories, and she's not kidding...it's a pretty scattered read if you try to go straight through them on their own, as only bits and pieces of story are presented.  I've probably only read a third or so of the canon, and all of that decades ago, although I've seen plenty of adaptations since then.  I was able to more or less follow along, but it's definitely a disjointed read.  Still, an interesting read if you know even a little Holmes lore.  $20 per volume at https://mkobooks.bigcartel.com/ but at the moment volume 2's first printing has sold out.

Stardust the Super Wizard Anthology: Blue Creek Creative/Zoop - All right, if you've been following this column for at least a few months, you know about Stardust, the extremely weird and brutal "superhero" written and drawn by Fletcher Hanks, and who has since slipped into the public domain (one of the rewards of the crowdfunding campaign that generated this anthology was a PDF collection of the original comics, which I reviewed recently).  None of the stories is particularly long, in keeping with the short pieces in the original Hanks works.  A few also feature Fantomah, Hanks's jungle woman character with Spectre-level powers, another darling of the public domain.  Some of these ship her with Stardust, even.  The tone of the stories ranges from hallucinogenic to fairly serious treatments of the character's premise, and two of the stories were written by children (including the one by Shaenon Garrity's son, which she then drew, featuring Stardust's cat Frostfluff).  It probably helps a little to have read at least some of the originals, if only to be certain that most of these tales are faithful to the source material (Derf Backderf's are more in the way of gag strips you might see in Mad Magazine in Stardust's reality), if not always to the tone.  The fact that Fletcher Hanks was a pretty awful human being is touched upon in a few of the stories, including the one written and drawn by Ian Hanks, Fletcher's grandson.  Stardust is something of an acquired taste, but if you've read the public domain stuff that's out and about online and were intrigued, this is a good extension of the Super Wizard's world.  No price on the book itself, but https://zoop.gg/c/stardust has the hardcover listed for $40.  Some graphic if cartoony violence, a little "indie comic style" nudity, and general "what the heck did I just read," so recommended for mature readers.

 

I decided I really wasn't interested in seeing where Power Fantasy went next, sorry.

Expected next month: My 2.5 kilogram Megaton Man Omnibus arrived very late in September and is way too big to get read before the end of the month (even though I've probably read most of the stuff in it as floppies), so it'll go in next month's column.  The Nothing Special artbook should arrive in October, although I dunno if I'll review it since it might not even be available outside of the crowdfund?  Speaking of crowdfunds, "Jacked Tracts" is getting ready to ship, but that doesn't automatically mean it's arriving in October.  Not expecting anything but crowdfunding fulfillments next month, though.

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.)

Fantastic Four (2025) #2: Marvel - The continuing adventures of the Fantastic Four NOT being allowed to defeat Doctor Doom, since that has to happen in an event title.  Most of the issue is spent enacting and explaining a Clever Plan to get back from all the temporal exiles the team was split up into, and they dive right back into fighting Doom like idiots anyway.  It is clever until it isn't, at least.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99

The World To Come #2 (of 6): Marvel - I am amused that in a "slightly in the future" sequence one of the Futuristic automobiles is just a Renault Twizy.  Additionally, that sequence feels like a typical "Priest's book has to give up pagecount to be in an Event," piece, even though the Event is something Priest made up and just exists to provide an escalation along the way to The World To Come.  Anyway, the interwoven flashbacks continue, this time focusing more on Ross than on T'Challa, although I think part of the plot got bobbled along the way, relying on the text piece timeline at the end to clarify.  I get the impression that #3 will focus mostly on T'challa's successor, now that his origin has been told this issue.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99

Most of these people
do not show up in this
comic.

Moon Knight #10: Marvel - This is Legacy Number 250, so it's a big double-sized special in which MacKay brings in a bunch of old Moon Knight foes he hasn't yet brought back (and who are still alive, so the pool is pretty shallow at this point).  Big running battle to bring down Fairchild, with everyone getting a dance partner and Tigra getting to snark about 70s and early 80s villain design.  The ending is a bit anticlimactic, I guess the real resolution is being saved for #12.  Still, even though some ends are left loose, thematically Fairchild is Dealt With and bad fashion choices are punished.  Recommended.  $4.99

Moon Knight #11: Marvel - This issue is the fiftieth anniversary of Moon Knight's first (heavily retconned now) appearance in Werewolf by Night, which calls for an in-story birthday party for Marc (who is canonically fifty years old now according to this story, although he's died and come back enough times that he joins Magneto in the "doesn't look that old" club).  Of course, with #12 coming up next, it's merely a breather before the next Big Issue, and the hits are gonna keep coming.  The art is also by a different person than #10, who had to deal with a oversized issue and might be up for another oversized #12.  Still, as a breather, it still manages to accomplish some things in terms of character development and resolving matters.  Recommended.  $3.99

Sonja Reborn #1 (of 6): Dynamite - My second Priest comic this month, it marks his return to Hyperboria after a rather long absence (he worked on the King Conan book as one of his first serious gigs at Marvel).  On the one hand, this isekai takes the piss out of a lot of Sonja's tropes, as a modern British woman named Maggie Sutherland ends up falling through a plot hole (well, a hole that is a plot point) and waking up as Sonja, in a deliberate echo of the very first Conan story.  Priest keeps it deliberately vague whether this is a "really happening" isekai (think the Wizard of Oz books, where Dorothy really did go to Oz) or a "hallucination after having been knocked unconscious" isekai (like the Wizard of Oz movie, where it was all a dream...spoiler warning, I guess?).  Even the short scene not from Maggie's POV involving what seem to be divine avatars only puts a thumb on the scale, since they could also be creating all this around Maggie for Reasons.  Either way, as vicious as Maggie might be by modern standards, she doesn't exactly react well to being surrounded by disemboweled corpses that she's told she helped make.  In any case, no connection to any other current Red Sonja books by other authors, or to the movie that came out this year.  Artist Miracolo's style seems better suited to horror than fantasy, but at least the Stjepan Sejic looks good.  A decent start story-wise, although I suspect Maggie's "British" dialogue might make actual Brits cringe a bit.  Recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen.

Vampirella #3-4 (Legacy 678-9): Dynamite - Third Priest, and second to have an alternate future where a supposed hero is responsible for a global dictatorship (although in World To Come is more of a "screwed up bad" responsibility, while Vampi's potential future self set out to conquer the world on purpose).  I will say, it was a bit jarring to have the Sacred Six portalling in and starting to throw magic around in #4 only to turn the page and get a two page ad for the Wizard of Oz comic...because that sort of thing happening as a continuation of the actual story could not be ruled out entirely.  Like, okay, Vampi's in Oz, I can work with that.  Anyway, over the course of these two issues, Cicero finishes telling Doc Chary his story, with selected scenes from the coming world, leaving it pretty clear that if not stopped Vampirella will doom the world while trying to save it.  This is a Priest story, though, so it's never that simple, and it looks like #5 will present an opposing interpretation of events (it's not too hard to see Cicero being cast as the bad guy, even from the things he admitted himself, so that'll probably get leaned on).  I'd recommend reading the trade, though, because this is like one of those Lego-knockoff models where it's really unstable until you're almost done and everything locks together.  $4.99 each, rated Teen. 

Star Trek Lower Decks #10: IDW - The first non-North arc wraps up, and Sheridan does check off the various "why this plot device isn't stupid or easily dismissed" boxes, but...a lot of the Wacky Stuff feels forced, like Sheridan has a list of background gags and B-plots and is just tossing them in to fill space.  Competent, I suppose, but there was precisely one gag that really landed for me.  I'll give the post-North era one more arc, but if it doesn't work better I'll be dropping this.  (My pull agreement might make me buy a couple issues beyond that, but I wouldn't review 'em.)  Very mildly recommended.  $4.99

Gatchaman - Joe: Bloodline one-shot: Mad Cave - Joe is an orphan, his parents killed by Galactor, something he has in common with most of the core team (although the fact Ken's father is still secretly alive as the captain of Red Impulse is not something that the current comics have touched upon yet).  This one-shot has him get a lead on a possible cousin, and while it's probably a trap, he can't just ignore the tiny tiny chance of finding some family.  Along the way, Steve Orlando REALLY leans into the Gatchaman schtick of nothing using real world place names...the opening scene has Joe driving across not-America just...to get some scenery, I guess, since the main story takes place in not-Italy, particularly not-Palermo (probably, although it could be based on a different Italian city).  I wonder if they'll ever publish a Gatchaman Gazetteer that places all these locations on a map.  Anyway, a good story about following your heart even when your head KNOWS it's a bad idea...but also not being stupid about the way the heart gets followed.  Recommended.  $6.99, rated Teen.

Gatchaman #11: Mad Cave - Another one-shot filler story with no connection to the ongoing arcs. written by Sam Humphries.  The team goes on a fishing trip, only to have it interrupted by a Galactor cuttlefish mecha that makes a typhoon.  The core series continues to be much weaker than the one-shots and limited series, sometimes it feels like Humphries is just going through a childhood notebook of Spectre/Galactor robot monster OCs and trying to work them all into the comic.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen.

 

Expected next time: Probably a skip month, as only five of my titles actually shipped in September after the current batch got mailed to me.  Well, I should have a new-to-me Matt Feazell thing I just ordered online, I guess that's floppy.

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), got some epic dust bunnies from his ceiling fan the other day, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.

 

"None of my childhood dreams came true.  All I've got left...is this promise." - Kafka, Kaiju No. 8 vol 14