Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Nothing. One of those months with a lot of good stuff, but nothing that REALLY grabbed me.
In this installment: I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level vol 1-5, Mecha-Ude Mechanical Arms vol 2, Touring After the Apocalypse vol 2-3, Shy vol 11, Isekai Samurai vol 2, Cat + Crazy vol 2, Go! Go! Loser Ranger! vol 15, Spider-Man Octo-Girl vol 3, After God vol 7, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 10, Cursed Princess Club vol 5, Godzilla Monsterpiece Theater, Fantastic Four #3-4, The World To Come #3 (of 6), Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #12-13, Gatchaman #12-13, Sonja Reborn #2-3 (of 6), Vampirella #5 (Legacy #680), Star Trek Lower Decks #11-12.
"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.
Nothing this month.
Expected next month: Dunno.
Digital Comics:
I will not be reviewing ongoing webcomics in this column, sticking with collections that I'll get in hardcopy form. eBook novels and streaming TV/movies will go above in Other Media. This is for full comics read in digital form, either because that's how they come out, or because I tried it out on the LibraryPass app but either didn't care for it or wasn't able to get a hardcopy before the end of the month. The heyday of ComiXology Originals is long gone, though, so there's not a lot of regular books I get digitally.
I will not be reviewing ongoing webcomics in this column, sticking with collections that I'll get in hardcopy form. eBook novels and streaming TV/movies will go above in Other Media. This is for full comics read in digital form, either because that's how they come out, or because I tried it out on the LibraryPass app but either didn't care for it or wasn't able to get a hardcopy before the end of the month. The heyday of ComiXology Originals is long gone, though, so there's not a lot of regular books I get digitally.
I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level vol 1-5: Yen Press - So, this is one of the older "overpowered isekai" series, being almost a decade old at this point. The translations are up to 15 volumes already, and it's not a closed series like Delicious in Dungeon, and that's more than I want to jump into on hardcopy for an ongoing. Yes, I know, long-running manga series don't require completionist behavior, but I'm kinda stuck in that mindset anyway. :) However, since it looks like the whole thing is going to end up on LibraryPass, I'll just read it there. Before going into details, I'll say that if it were REALLY good, I'd have bit the bullet and started ordering hardcopies anyway, but it's merely cute and amusing. Worth the time, but not the shelf space.
The premise is that the protagonist dies of overwork, which seems to result in more isekai than truck-kun (technically Lord Van died of ennui, but Rei Taylor may well have died in her sleep of exhaustion). She's offered resurrection by the typical plot device god-level entity (and yes, the tone of the story treats it like a hoary trope), and picks immortality and a life of ease, never having to work more than she feels like. Three hundred years pass like this for the newly renamed and reborn Lady Azusa, as the title indicates, killing the slimes (typical lowbie monsters in JRPGs, they leave crystals behind when they die) for pocket money and occasionally using her herbalist skills to help the villagers down the hill from her home. She becomes known as the Witch of the Highlands, a purely local notoriety that never seems to result in any particular obligation or hassle for her. On one of her periodic visits to the guild hall to cash in her monster crystals, she's asked for a check of her stats...this is a LitRPG, but things like stats are only accessible using special magical tools. And lo and behold, she's at the level cap and has insane stats. A few XP a day consistently applied over 300 years will do that, the ultimate low-effort grind. The secret gets out despite Azusa's efforts, challengers appear looking to test themselves against her, and her lazy lifestyle looks to be over but she's not giving up slacking without a very low-energy fight. I do suspect the god-level being decided to curse her with being irresistible to women, because this is very much a harem manga, but Azusa is pretty much straight and does not particularly like the fact that all these women are romantically interested. Especially when they get super creepy and onee-con about it, like the Demon King (who is, of course, a cute girl like just about every important character in the series). It's cheesecake yuri played for laughs, a situation comedy that manages to not annoy me, perhaps because it really doesn't play the anxiety card too much. More the slapstick card. There's occasional nudity, mostly for comedic purposes, and never with more detail than a mannequin. If it were in full color there might be more of an issue of age warning, but it's far more silly than sexual. Like Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, we have an overpowered protagonist who just wants to live the easy life, but keeps getting sucked into major events by a combination of having basic ethics and sometimes wanting something that can only be obtained by Adventuring or doing a favor for someone or otherwise getting sucked into the Plot. I know a lot of people are uninterested in the "She's 300 years old (or 2000 or whatever like some of the demons) but looks like a hot 17 year old" trope, and that's a perfectly valid reason to skip this series. If it doesn't bother you, this is an amusing diversion, with some clever humor and subversion of harem manga tropes. LibraryPass doesn't scan the back covers where the full price and rating info goes, but the U.S. price for the hardcopy is $13.00 online, and I suspect it's rated Teen or maybe Older Teen (for all the no-detail nudity and ribaldry).
Expected next month: I'll only review more Killing Slimes if something significant changes, but I figure I'll keep reading it as it goes up. Otherwise, I may or may not have anything in this section in December.
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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| Ghosts in the Machines |
Shy vol 11: Yen Press - Shy needs to stay out of the public eye because it's clear she's being specifically targeted, and the irony is palpable, because now she WANTS to be in the public eye helping people. Other heroes help cover Japan as the villains seek to draw her out, while she experiments with the new wind powers she inherited from the ninja sister in the Tokyo arc. There is a strong suggestion that the rings that empower the villains were not created by their leader so much as found and corrupted by him, beyond the mere fact that Shy has a cleansed ring now. The art is slowly getting better in terms of portraying action without being confusing...or maybe I'm just getting used to Miki's style. I do think the "Shy needs to stay out of sight" thing was a little forced, especially since one of the villains seemed to come for her civilian ID in vol 10, but it's possible that this seemingly inappropriate tactic is a hint of a deeper game. Or the author might just be having a rough patch in the plotting. Mildly recommended. $13.00/$17.00Cn, Rated Teen LV (still not seeing any rough language, I am starting to wonder if Yen Press just slaps that on everything to be safe)
Isekai Samurai vol 2: Yen Press - Okay, volume 1 set up the premise and some of the fairly-generic LitRPG world. This volume does a bit more setup, including laying out the rules of magic (mostly, it seems, so that when someone violates them almost immediately it's a sign that they're a Big Deal). But this volume is mostly about setting up three (or maybe two, I suspect the first two are connected) conflicts to carry through the series on various scales. The first involves the greedy jerk "hero" briefly shown in volume 1, and her path crosses Ginko's...well, the path of Ginko's ARROW...this volume. Suffice to say it is not a great friend-making opportunity, and she's at the very least going to be a long term problem for Ginko and her friends. The second is a larger scale threat, in that someone has been boosting the power of monsters and giving them intel on when the capital city is easiest to attack. It is during her work to deal with such an attack that Ginko makes an impression on the greedy hero. A deep impression. Some of that V in the rating below is involved, by accident, honest. Anyway greedy hero might be the one behind the attack, creating opportunities for money-making, but she might also be completely innocent of this, in which case there might be a later rapprochement between her and Ginko. Still, regardless of how that all plays out, it's small potatoes compared to the HUGE, ontological conflict established in this volume. Ginko has an insanely solid ethical code (as she demonstrates this volume), but it's a code developed in a world where there are no "monsters." This is the sort of LitRPG world where there are thinking beings called monsters who are due no particular ethical consideration, as opposed to people (humans, elves, dwarves, etc) who are. Will Ginko find this problematic? Perhaps, but she's too busy shocking the hell out of everyone with the fact she will kill PEOPLE under rigidly defined circumstances. This world does not have war between People races, just People against Monsters and vice versa. Mass-murderers do exist, of course, but the idea of a "good person" who would ever kill another human is anathema. At the end of the volume, Ginko is set up to fight a Hero of Justice rather than submit to imprisonment, but her existence is going to rock civilization to its core if she gets away with being a hundred-killer. On the one hand, a silly and frothy (if some of that froth is bloody) Groo-like fight story. On the other hand, it's not like Groo stories are without depth (even if Groo himself tends to be), and the creator of this series seems eager to tackle some hard moral issues raised in fantasy warrior stories. Recommended. $14.00/$18.50Cn, Rated Older Teen LV (lots of spraying blood, and this DOES have some foul language, mostly from the greedy hero antagonist)
Cat + Crazy vol 2: Dark Horse Manga - So, in volume 1 it was possible that "sensei" was just a highly trained weirdo, and it was even plausible that this took place in the same world as Cat + Gamer. This volume it becomes clear that magic is real and there's multiple shadowy international organizations focused on cats, even if the average person lives a life much like our own without any certain knowledge of all of this. The tone is kinda like Yu-Gi-Oh, but with cats instead of card games. As if to lampshade that these worlds are separate, there's an implication that Cat + Gamer is actually fiction within this world, as an actress featured in one story is apparently going to play the C+G protagonist in a movie. All that aside, it continues the C+G tradition of talking about real cat behaviors and psychology, as part of the protagonist's training involves working at a troubled cat cafe and solving problems there via his Deku-like notebooks and obsessive study. This is something of a transitional volume, tonally, and it sometimes feels a little rough as it whipsaws between realism and magic. Hopefully things settle down a bit soon and Wataru Nadatani finds a groove. Mildly recommended. $12.99/$17.50Cn, no rating (but some fantasy violence)
Go! Go! Loser Ranger! vol 15: Kodansha - Meanwhile, one year later.... There was a time jump as part of the quiet climax of the Three-Way Battle, and some non-Fighter-D stuff set up for the new normal, but now D is back in the saddle and working on his new plan for taking over the world. Conveniently, the Ranger Force has a sort of general amnesty for everyone who fled in the wake of the Three-Way Battle, so he can pick up his slot on Green squad without hassle. I do think the "story so far" section could stand a few more pages, because there are a LOT of characters who the reader is expected to keep separate without much in the way of in-story reminders (as I've noted before, this series would be a lot more clear in color, or at least with shading tones that made it clear who was which color). In keeping with the series so far, D is mostly a monkey wrench in everyone else's plots, as he doesn't really seem capable of succeeding in his own even with a lot of luck and help from people who think he's advancing their own plans. Lots of deep ethical crises and social upheaval and D really just doesn't care about any of that stuff happening around him...it really is a good depiction of a nuanced heroes-vs-monsters story from the point of view of a side character who has no depth at all and staunchly resists acquiring any. A sort of complement to Isekai Samurai in that respect, his very lack of ethics (beyond "monsters should rule!") provides a sort of greenscreen against which everyone else's morality jumps into sharp relief while they project their own expectations onto him. Recommended. $10.99/$14.99Cn, Rated Older Teen 16+ for a lot of fantasy violence.
Spider-Man: Octo-Girl vol 3: Marvel/Viz - The "story so far" page really drives home that everyone's name is alliterative, although without the actual Japanese text it's hard to tell how many are also puns like Taka Toma being a reference to a bird of prey. Marika Maruko might be a Man-Mountain Marco riff, and I think Kirika Kurabe might be heading in a Mysterio homage direction, but that's some wild guessing. The majority of this volume is an extended battle, although it's broken up by occasional flashbacks to the preparations. It's Taka Toma's assault on Across Tower, Across being the invention-stealing analogue to Norman Osborn (although they do exist in the 616 continuity, according to one of the notes pages). Your basic slimy multinational that acquires tech in ways both technically legal and very definitely not (although you'd be hard pressed to prove it in court) and is fully prepared to deal with the sort of supervillains they inevitably irritate along the way. And superheroes, although they're less worried about the heroes because their sort never worries about the Good Guys. While technically their opposition now is mostly middle-school girls (please ignore that some look like first-graders and others like high-schoolers), it also includes two instances of Otto Octavius, and like many such tech ghouls they never think that the inventor of their stolen tech might just have backdoors that their people aren't genius enough to eliminate. Needless to say, by the end of the volume things are not going according to anyone's plans, although Otoha is adapting pretty well to this super-person lifestyle. I get the feeling that by the time they finally resolve the head!Otto issue (if it ever gets resolved), Otoha will be ready to start an independent tech hero career alongside her friends, in a sort of Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain way. Recommended. $11.99/$15.99Cn, rated Older Teen (kids in peril, if nothing else)
After God vol 7: Viz - Last volume, it was possible that the mild-mannered veterinarian sidekick-like character was bluffing when he faced down Alura, but everything gets laid on the table for the readers, even if the characters still have reason to keep secrets from each other. While this is the biggest deal in terms of the overplot, a lot of this volume focuses on the efforts of the servants of one of the other gods (the "pile of wings" Ahf-Azu) as they dance around the Anti-God taskforce and we get their backstories. As often happens, Waka herself doesn't do much, although she does get at few scenes at least. Sumi Eno is pretty thorough at rotating the POV, to the point it's hard to tell if there really is a main protagonist as opposed to an ensemble cast where any two characters may be allies or enemies at any given time. The snake god continues to be a goofball, but an often tragic one, and questions of identity are often answered murkily if at all. Recommended. $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, Rated Older Teen for massive body horror although the ultraviolence is pretty restrained this time.
Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 10: Viz - Meanwhile, one year later.... Yes, another year-long time-skip, although in this case it wasn't laid out at the end of the previous volume. In the wake of the frame job enacted by the oligarchs (the villain is, as often the case, capitalism) everyone in the company has had to scatter to the winds, helped here and there to find new jobs by allies who were limited in what they could do overtly. Technically, by taking the fall, Shigemoto protected the others from legal problems, but that didn't keep them fully out of the eyes of the enemy. As long as they all kept their heads down, they'd be okay, but obviously they weren't going to do that forever, and with the passage of a year they're ready to go back to work, with the first order of business being getting in contact with Shigemoto and trying to restore the dream of Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. Their first gambit seems to be a failure, with an unexpected enemy standing in their way, but we do at least get to see their new uniforms and techniques. The obvious having failed, it's time for a new strategy, which forms the basis for the next arc. A mix of old allies and questionable new allies will help them...for now, at least. But they're up against The System itself, and it's not just one Bad Guy who needs to be thwarted but an entire corrupt capitalist nation, if not the world itself. So...an appropriate enemy for a magical girl series, yes? If the stakes aren't the world or nothing, are they really even magical girls? Recommended. $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, Rated Teen (fantasy violence)
Expected next month: Easygoing Territory Defense vol 6 (release date of Nov 25, but it's not a title my local B&N stocks and they don't ship pre-orders until the date of release, it's currently due to arrive December 2 or 3 in the mail), Touring After The Apocalypse vol 4-6, Spy x Family vol 15, Infini-T Force vol 5, Asadora! vol 9. There's a couple of books that looked interesting from the ordering page, I'll wait and see if they show up on the shelf though, they didn't interest me enough to order sight-unseen.
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.
Cursed Princess Club vol 5: WebToon Unscrolled - While the series was broken into four Books, each of the first two has taken up about two physical volumes each (with some of the usual story expansion that happens to most series, so I wouldn't be surprised of Book 4 takes three volumes). This volume mostly focuses on the dinner party Gwen is throwing as her capstone project for homeschooling, and introduces the Plaid Queen to the cast. It also kicks off the actual Villain type conflict (as opposed to "Gwen versus her own self-image," which does reach a bit of a climax as she tries to force a happy ending as well). Some of the unusual events and behaviors of previous volumes are explained, and a plot device is introduced that will help explain the rest. As a bridge between what had seemed to be the main plot and what will become the main plot, it isn't as strong on its own as previous volumes, but still pretty good. Recommended. $18.99/$24.99Cn
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| Mole Man better not be getting any ideas. |
Expected next month: The Glass Scientists vol 3. Punderworld vol 2 is due December 30, so unless it hits shelves early (like Cursed Princess Club did) I likely won't get it until January. [Later note: Punderworld vol 2 has been pushed back to February.]
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.)
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| Nummy Muffin Cocoolbutter |
The World To Come #3 (of 6): Marvel - The multiple levels of flashback continue, split mostly between Ketema's ascension and a time in T'Challa's youth, both of them having been trained and taught by a particularly cruel religious fundamentalist named Odunayo. Seeing T'Challa's openness to the outside world as a failure in his teaching, Odunayo doubled down on Ketema, which is the sort of thing we all know never blows up in your face. (It blew up in his face pretty badly, given what we've seen of "present day" in the framing sequences.) Along the way there's some attempts to retcon T'Chaka's death a bit, dealing with the inconsistency between "super-advanced and savvy Wakandans" and "rando South African mercenary manages to kill the king," suggesting Klaw was largely a pawn in factional power plays without knowing it. On the one hand, this is an alternate future timeline where Priest seems have a pretty free hand in playing What If? style dark plotlines, but on the other it keeps dipping into the canonical past and saying things about it too. So, even if you're inclined to dismiss alternate future stories, this isn't JUST an alternate future story. Recommended. $4.99
Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #12-13: Marvel - Well, we've already had two anniversary big event issues this year, so MacKay is more than excused for starting a new arc here instead of trying to make it yet another big event climax sort of thing. The precipitating event for this arc is Wrecker coming to Moon Knight for help dealing with a problem...sure, he was paid to help break Khonshu out of Asgardian prison, but that doesn't mean he doesn't think Marc owes him. Along the way, Marc runs into an old friend...who was first mentioned in the comics two years ago. The thing is, because MacKay has been so thorough in scouring the backstory for obscure old Moon Knight friends and foes to bring into the book, it feels just the same when he brings in a retconned-in character borrowed from the backstory of the MCU Moon Knight. The interactions feel just like they're with someone from back in the mid-80s comics, because MacKay has already established how he writes that sort of legacy character, and he just does the same with "Haven't seen you in 15 years, you could've written" implants. It works well, it feels like these are people who were very close through some very intense times, and all the old scars get ripped open but they also just fall into comfortable old habits (good and bad) with each other. Recommended. $3.99 each.
Gatchaman #12-13: Mad Cave - The A-plot of these two issues involves Galactor unleashing a new kind of mecha-monster that the G-Force is ill-equipped to fight, showing that they can be pretty clever. The B-plot focusing on the corrupted trainees shows that Galactor can be pretty stupid and wasteful. Like, some seriously stupid ticking off lines on the Evil Overlord list, almost as if Berg Katse was actually trying to sabotage his own side in the most destructive and cruel ways possible. It's getting to the point I think I'm going to drop the main series and just read the one-shots and miniseries side stories, because Humphries is writing like a junior high student who has just discovered he can shock people with writing. Neutral. $4.99 each.
Sonja Reborn #2-3 (of 6): Dynamite - The flashbacks largely catch up to the start of #1, establishing why Maggie was actually going after Skye in that portal-containing subway line. Where her motivation in #1 seemed a bit petty and stereotypical "jealous lover" in nature, it's revealed to be more along the lines of "My life is ****ed now, might as well settle some petty scores before I go to prison for all the crimes that'll be coming out now." This simultaneously justifies her running hot and cold on Skye (she was never THAT invested in killing her, and now Skye seems like a lone anchor to sanity) and sets up the possibility of eventually getting used to this new life and wanting to stay (since there's nothing worth going back to). Not that she's even remotely used to it at the moment, and most of the present-day time involves her being convinced she'll wake up at any moment, especially if she dies, which does not do much for one's survival chances in the Hyborian Age. Fortunately for her long term survival but unfortunately for her piece of mind, the end of #3 has her get a visit from one of the mysterious entities from #1 and she acquires at least a surface read on Sonja's memories, if not an explanation for WHY she's been dumped into the redhead's life. As the Goon Show would say, "This is where the story really starts, folks!" Still not keen on the interior art, it's a pity Sejic couldn't do the interior and not just the covers. Mildly recommended, it might work better read all in one go as a trade collection though. $4.99 each.
Vampirella #5 (Legacy #680): Dynamite - Where The World To Come and the current Vampirella arc both play with alternate futures where the hero becomes the villain, the reasons behind the choices that led to it are far more personal for Vampi. She wants to protect her son. Protect the world from the corrupt rulers who would destroy it, and her son along with it. Protect her son (who hates her) from an alien invasion. And somehow not notice that it's got her all cyborged up and sitting on a metal throne of skulls like a villain in a Heavy Metal Magazine story. Road to hell, good intentions, etc. Telling yourself you're being rational when you're not even close to rationality. As with The World To Come, I suspect this will hang together better as a finished story than being read in chunks over several months, but for now just mildly recommended. $4.99.
Star Trek Lower Decks #11-12: IDW - Another two-issue arc, this one focusing on Cetacean Ops (and various acronymic puns on that), tying up a bit of a loose thread from Star Trek IV. Namely...sure, you brought back a mated pair of humpback whales, but that's not gonna result in a viable population, so what happens next time the probe returns? So, it's back to the 20th Century in search of more whales! The resulting story that comes from this interesting premise is...okay. It feels a bit too paint-by-number, though, often throwing in references just to have references, and I feel like Sheridan is working under the assumption that it's goofball comedy and doesn't need to make sense. While some of the actual episodes were like that too, those weren't the better ones. Very mildly recommended. $4.99 each.
Expected next time: December will likely be another skip month, but since the stuff above shipped at the start of November I might have enough built up by mid-December to ship again. When I next have a shipment, whenever it is, it'll be more of the titles above (even if I decide to drop Gatchaman, there's still a least one issue already in my folder), plus the Peter Cannon: Thunderbolts series from Dynamite.
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), continued his long tradition of not traveling for Thanksgiving, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.
"Strange and I have a...COMPLICATED relationship." "I'll bet you hit him. You HIT him, didn't you?" "Just the ONCE." - Moon Knight and Scarlet Scarab, Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #13
Dave's Capsules for November 2025
Reviewed by Dvandom
on
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Rating:
Reviewed by Dvandom
on
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Rating:
