Dave's Capsules for April 2026

Archive of older reviews

Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Ichi the Witch vol 2, SideQuested Book 1

In this installment: Oreo: the Stuf of DOOM, Voyage de Gourmet, Nancy Drew Mystery Stories: The Secret of the Old Clock Ep 2, Ichi the Witch vol 2, Wolf's Daughter: A Werewolf's Tale vol 3, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear vol 13, Infini-T Force vol 7, Cat + Crazy vol 3, SideQuested Book 1, Xxxenophile Omnibus, Fantastic Four #9, Marc Spector: Moon Knight #2,  MAD about DC #1, Gatchaman #16, Thundarr the Barbarian #2, Vampirella #12 (Legacy #687, Sonja Reborn #6 (of 6), Star Trek Lower Decks #17-18, Godzilla Monsterpiece Theater presents Romeo & Juliet and Godzilla.

"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.

Oreo: The Stuf of DOOM: Marvel/Mondelez International - These were on clearance for two bucks (down from $5.39) so I decided to grab a package and try them out.  They're...Oreos, basically.  One cookie is standard Oreo, the other has Dr. Doom's face.  They're double-stuf, and while the package says the creme tastes like chocolate and marshmallow I didn't think it tasted like much at all.  Certainly not enough to be noticed over the massive bitter chocolate of the cookie parts (I am not a huge fan of Oreo's cookies).  The creme is softer and fluffier than I remember, but it's been quite a while since I had any Oreos.  The package claims the creme changes color, which I suppose is for the benefit of people watching you eat with your mouth open, so kids'd like that.  I didn't notice any color change other than getting a little darker, though.  These are "special edition 04 of 04," with the others being hero-themed.  Yeah, collectible packaging.  I suppose the whole thing is collectible, but I am NOT going to get perishable food as a collectible.  Really just reviewing this as a gag, since otherwise there wouldn't be anything in this section this month.  :)  Price varies but probably $5-6 unless already on clearance.  Worth the two bucks I paid, I suppose.

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.

 

Voyage de Gourmet: Mad Cave Studios - I almost skipped over this entirely, but then I noticed it's written by Paul Tobin, whose work I've liked in the past, so I gave it a read.  The "loud" part of the plot is the titular Voyage de Gourmet, a sort of cross between Cutthroat Kitchen and Amazing Race, as teams of mostly pretty young chefs travel to exotic locations and cook under challenging (or even stupid) conditions.  The real plot, though, is the mending of a friendship between two food bloggers three years after one of them was a real jerk without even realizing it (due to being a self-centered jerk).  Thus, it's mostly a teen romance story, and while it was executed fairly well, I wasn't particularly inclined to pick up the hardcopy for my shelf.  If the general premise appeals to you, however, it is done well and you might enjoy this.  $14.99, all ages.

Her compact doesn't have a
weather app, I guess.

Nancy Drew Mystery Stories: The Secret of the Old Clock Ep 2: Patreon.com - Chapters 4 and 5 adapted this time around.  Chapter 4 mostly has Nancy doing legwork to establish the legality of the Toppam will by talking it over with her father and his legal associates (including in a different town a decent drive away).  In Chapter 5, she takes a "Farm-to-Market road" a little out of the way back home to check out yet another set of people who should've been in Toppam's will but weren't.  (According to the Nancy Drew wiki, River Heights is in Illinois, but that's not one of the states that has Farm-to-Market roads...I suspect that's an artifact of Espinosa's time in Texas, one of the states that calls its county roads that.  I never read the original, but being written in the 1930s it would've predated the formal naming of minor roads like that and might not have specified anything but "country back road" or something.)  The Carolyn Keene collective really believed in piling high the reasons to want the revised will found, eh?  Horrible sole heirs, multiple sets of poor hard-workin' folks that should've been included, etc.  The anachronisms continue to fly fast and furious, despite Espinosa's statement that the setting is mostly 1950s there's references to plenty of more modern things, and most of the vehicles are modern (Nancy's car is her dad's old muscle car, and he probably got it from his dad or someone of a similar age, because it appears to be more of a 1960s model).  Given that Nancy has had this particular story rebooted many times over the decades, having a version that is smeared over the entire lifespan seems apt, though.  The writing is not as clunky as episode 1, either Espinosa is doing more script-doctoring now or the Keene collective was getting its writerly legs under it.  (For those who don't know, "Carolyn Keene" is a shared pseudonym created by the publisher as part of a cynical cash grab to follow up on the success of the Hardy Boys.)  Recommended.  Patreon's been messing with the UI lately and I'm not sure what tier is needed to get these automatically, but it looks like there's now a link to buy just the issues (and not other content) for $3.99.

 

Expected next month: Well, I was going to say Nancy Drew Ep 2, but it came out just in time to make the deadline for this column (unlike one of my online orders down below).  However, on April 30 I got a Kickstarter-related digital copy of Godzilla: Kai-Sei Era #1 and I don't want to rush it, so I'll do that for next month's column.

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.

Ichi the Witch vol 2: Viz - This continues to be one of the most sarcastic books I've read in a long time, and I binged Murderbot over the last few months.  And yet, the title character isn't oblivious to the snide comments he gets, he just doesn't think it's something that should bother him.  This volume is roughly split into four pieces: wrapping up the hunt started at the end of vol 1 (with a clever if disgusting solution), a meeting of the heads of the guild about whether to announce Ichi's existence to the world, a competition to sway a dissenting vote, and then Ichi being distracted by a much more powerful Majik.  The first three pieces are really strong and funny.  The last one isn't quite as engaging a read, but it's trying to shift tone to This Is Serious, establishing that there are stakes and Ichi isn't just gonna overpower his way through everything.  So, it's important to the longer term (although I hope it ends inconclusively, else the book get trapped in Dragonball-style infinite escalation), and I'll accept it.  Strongly recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Teen for violence and maybe a little innuendo.

Wolf's Daughter: A Werewolf's Tale vol 3: Seven Seas - At the end of vol 2, Tsukino could no longer bear to pretend to be a normal human anymore and ran away from home, ending up at the family vineyard of the black wolves.  This volume is all about learning what her life could be like now that she's decided to abandon the life her parents helped lay out for her for 18 years, and not just life among the black wolves.  About halfway through, Kirito (whose name gets explained this volume) shows up, and to avoid bloodshed Tsukino goes with him to his home and gets to experience the isolated mountain white wolf way of life as well.  In both cases she's more than a tourist but less than a full member of either society, the theme being set up that she has to choose, but it needs to be an informed choice.  A secondary theme is that she's still too concerned with others and not enough with herself...while she improves some in that regard, it's always going to be a slow process for anyone, much less someone who is suddenly unsure what "concerned with herself" even looks like anymore.  The threat of her mother dragging her home is put off for a while, but as long as she's still willing to go along with the loudest voice to avoid others being hurt, she still won't be able to make her own choices for real.  (This "can't we all get along" attitude does look like it might lead her accidentally into polycule territory, but I don't know anything about the writer's views on such things and whether that's a plausible plot development.)  The Next Volume page suggests that this first stage will get cleared next time, though, especially since this volume takes the time to set up a few other conflicts and mysteries to help carry the story past Tsukino's confrontation with her mother.  Recommended.  $13.99/$17.99Cn, rated Teen 13+ (romance, some minor violence, animal death)

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear vol 13: Seven Seas - I was kind of expecting this volume to put a dent in Yuna's perfect record of smacking down anything that got in her way, since courtly intrigue isn't something you can sic a bear on (as much as you might want to), but I guess her pre-isekai media diet gave her enough background to be competent enough here too.  Her social anxiety has definitely been losing its grip on her over the time spent in this other world, I suspect that volume 1 Yuna might have just noped out and let things play out as they may.  I also suspect she's not going to be able to hide behind "I'm just a commoner" for too much longer if she keeps gaining the positive attention of kings and aristocrats, so her next mortifying challenge is likely to be ennoblement.  While this series shows every indication now of running for a very long time, I get the feeling that the endgame for Kumanano is to have Yuna eventually return to her original world, now ready to take over the family business after having grown into a wise and influential leader.  But that's just speculation on my part.  In addition to the challenge of courtly intrigue, Yuna gets into a physical fight that's unusual for her...an all-out fight against a powerful human foe.  Up until now, most of the humans she went up against were not really combatants, or they were cannon fodder, while her tougher foes have all been monsters of limited intelligence (and also very much Okay To Kill...while this doesn't seem to be an Isekai Samurai situation regarding killing people, Yuna still doesn't seem inclined to kill her human opponents, which means having to risk holding back too much).  The infinite escalation trap is also a concern here, but so far Kumanano seems to be avoiding sliding too deep into it.  Recommended.  $13.99/$17.99Cn, rated Teen 13+ (violence, endangered children)

Infini-T Force vol 7: Mad Cave/Nakama Press - So, it's time for the Tragic Backstory for one of the main villain's lieutenants, so you know they're not long for the world.  Elements of it seemed familiar enough that I went looking to see if they were original to this series or taken from elsewhere, and in the process I discovered that there was an anime of this in 2017...I guess it didn't exactly make a big impact.  I suspect that the only reason this manga is getting translated is that it was an option in Mad Cave's overall Gatchaman license, and they decided to go for it.  The Tekkaman/Rin romance comes to a head in this volume, and each finds that they value duty over love, with tragic results for not just both of them but also lots of people around them.  Polimar is particularly hard-hit by his part in things, and in the course of his attempts to process it all his seeming timing inconsistency (he was clearly a resident in Emi's building before she got the magic pencil) is resolved.  It's important for anyone coming into this series from just Battle of the Planets to keep in mind that all four source series went quite dark and bloody, they were not cartoons aimed at little kids.  The new characters Kodachi Ukyou adds as antagonists fit into that darkness pretty well, most of them are upholding some sort of noble ideal, and all the heroes risk going as far in pursuit of ideals as the villains do.  Except Damian, he's just an asshole so far, if he has an actual idea to uphold we've yet to see any sign of it.  (While poking around for the tiny amount of online information about Rin/Belle Lynn, I did find a comment that Damian's goal is to be perfectly evil, but that was about a part of the story we've already seen in the manga translations, and he hasn't gotten his backstory laid out yet.)  Recommended.  $10.99/$14.99Cn, rated Teen 13+ (violence including a rather significant bit of plot-important "would not make it past BS&P" violence)

Non-Crazy, Non-Cat Lady

Cat + Crazy vol 3: Dark Horse Manga - Almost had to push this back to next month because shipping was taking a while, but it showed up on LibraryPass so as long as it shows up by the end of the month I can include it.  :)  (Infini-T Force did not show up on LibraryPass.)  Also, I finally looked at the copyright information, this predates Cat + Gamer, so the actress scene from last volume was actually more of a foreshadowing than a back-reference.  There's a total of six volumes of this title, and then the eight volumes of Cat + Gamer picked up immediately afterwards.  Nothing on Wikipedia about anything else from creator Wataru Nadatani.  Anyway, this volume introduces another human to the cast, a rough-looking character who is just as cat-crazy as our main protagonist.  So, another weirdo.  The worldbuilding continues to add more to the secret world of cats, to the point I practically expect a crossover with Diane Duane's Feline Wizardry books to happen before the series ends.  That said, while I enjoy the more over the top nature of cat interactions in this series, I've read enough now to say I overall prefer the more realistic approach taken in Cat + Gamer (which does eventually give us more looks into the thoughts of the cats, but doesn't do things like give them a secret written language).  Recommended.  $12.99/$17.50Cn, unrated (some light cat-on-human violence).

 

Expected next month: Touring After the Apocalypse vol 7, The Great Cleric vol 13, Tank Chair vol 8.  There's a few "end of May" books that'll probably go into June, just as two of the books on this list technically released in April.  Happy Kanako's Killer Life vol 8 was pushed back AGAIN, to the end of July...if it had come out this month it'd have been "only" a two year gap between volumes.  Checking Wikipedia I see there was a live action streaming show that aired in 2024, so I guess yet another comic I read got stalled by the allure of motion (although it's usually animation projects that kill webcomics I like).  

 

I picked up a few older manga at Yellow City Comic Con this month, but I'll save them for next month since it looks like it might be a slower month for me even with the April stuff that doesn't arrive until May.

Other Trades:

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

The sins, er, questlines of
the parents shall be visited 
upon the children.

SideQuested Book 1: Andrews McMeel - Okay, this is a fairly long-running webcomic that I hadn't been reading, although I do see a lot of co-author/scripter K.B. Spangler on BlueSky through multiple mutual acquaintances.  However, when this popped up on LibraryPass, I decided to give it a try, and after reading it went to get the hardcopy.  I figure I'll stick with the collections and resist the impulse to archive-dive (and I am NOT going to start an archive dive into this creative team's Hugo-nominated webcomic A Girl And Her Fed, that thing's twenty years old).  The starting premise is your basic "child of nobility hidden as a commoner to protect her from courtly intrigue, but now she needs to take her place in the court and boy was all of this a bad idea in retrospect" deal.  But instead of being a fish out of water, Charlie Goldskin is more of a stick of dynamite in the fish pond.  However, the story doesn't START there, we get that in flashback.  Instead, the story starts several bad choices down the line with Charlie (for reasons not yet made clear) trying to rescue a princess from a witch's tower.  Turns out she thinks she screwed up an arranged marriage that involved a rescue quest as part of the courtship (this is a somewhat satirical fantasy setting at times) and thought she needed to rescue the jilted fiancee and oh no she's hot.  Yeah, there's the making of a true love triangle here, aka a throuple, although it's probably gonna be a while before all the cluelessness and shyness gets worked out.  Once the flashbacks are over, it slowly comes out that the three youngsters are getting caught up in unfinished business of their parents old adventuring party, which may well upend society like...throwing dynamite into a fish pond, so I guess Charlie's suited to the job.  That, however, is just the plot, and serious as it is, there's a Foglio-ish sort of execution here, with both excellent comedic writing and some terrific visual execution.  Not imitating the Foglio style, mind you, just managing the same sort of outcome.  I was literally laughing out loud at times when reading this (in my office, but fortunately everyone in the suite was out so I didn't have to explain myself).  Strongly recommended.  $18.99/$25.99Cn, no rating but there's some minor fantasy violence and a lot of (cute) disaster bisexuality.

Xxxenophile Omnibus: Discordia Publishing/Studio Foglio - This was another Kickstarter book.  Yeah, I have all the regular issues and the "was never floppies" volume 6 of the original collected edition, but given the financial issues the Foglios have been going through, I decided to back the collection too.  In case anyone looking at the title wonders what this is about, it's SF/F porn.  Pretty hard porn in most cases.  And it's also a really fun read even if you have zero interest in the sex, because it's written by Phil Foglio.  Every story has a different inker, which was a way to both network and make sure some friends or people Phil thought were promising could get work.  So, this has most of the content of issues 1-11 from decades ago, all of the volume 6 extended story, and a short bit at the end returning to the volume 6 adventuring party (no publication date on any specific pieces, but the reference to Kovalic in it suggests this was done rather later than volume 6 rather than soon after).  That said, it's not complete, something Foglio sort of dances around in the foreword.  He doesn't say WHICH stories are missing or why, just that they "wouldn't fly" these days.  So, I spent some time with my original issues and figured out which stories and what they had in common: Cat of the Curse People, Fool's Mate, Adventures of Rex Kevlar, and A Beautiful Tale.  Each of them in some way implies, refers to, or could be mistaken for bestiality (even if it's a human brain inside the animal's body).  So, if any of those stories was your personal favorite, sorry, it's not included.  Also missing are all the covers, the pinups from the inside front and back covers of the individual issues, and any other pinups that were exclusive to the six volume collected edition.  If you've only heard about this series and are now old enough to buy your own copy, it really is very funny (there's a reason I used "Foglio-like" as a compliment above) and a great lesson in how the collaboration between penciller and inker can really affect the feel of a book.  And there's sex.  So much of that.  No price on the book itself, but expect to pay more than the $86 I paid in the Kickstarter.  Rated OMG SO TOTALLY NSFW EVEN THE BACK COVER HAS NIPPLES DON'T EVEN BRING THIS TO WORK MUCH LESS CRACK IT OPEN UNLESS IT'S A VERY RELAXED WORKPLACE OR IN A LESS UPTIGHT COUNTRY THAN THE USA.

Expected next month: Shock City Punks may have released April 21, but the copy I ordered that day (my store didn't stock it) won't arrive until May.  Punderworld vol 2 has been rescheduled a couple times, but should actually be out in early May.  I also ordered Nerd Inferno after it showed up on LibraryPass and I skimmed it a bit...yeah, I own and have reviewed most of the content as floppies over the decades, but what the heck.

Update: Punderworld shipped with a printing error, so it's been recalled and will ship again in June.  Sigh.

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.)

Huh, I was wrong about this being a skip month.  A combination of March's shipment being early in the month and a couple of one-shots brought my pull up to the "ship it" threshold I have set in time to make the April reviews.

Fantastic Four #9: Marvel - Part 4 of the Invincible Woman arc, although she has to share it with all the "FF foes figure out they're off Earth and decide to attack" B-plot stuff.  The A-plot this issue is mostly "Amoral Super Sue casually wipes the floor with the FF for funsies" followed by running away very very fast.  I remember reading the original "Malice" story (which is referenced visually by Invincible Woman's spiked mask, even if no characters bring it up), and I'm not sure we needed a repeat with higher stakes, even if it kicked off with an indictment of power scaling arguments.  I appreciate the intellectual exercise of poking at the theoretical limits of the FF's powers, but sometimes poking at the genre conventions just makes things less interesting, not more.  Mildly recommended.  $3.99, rated Teen.

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #2: Marvel - Nobody respects Zodiac, and he seems fine with that.  He has his obsession, and if people underestimating him makes it easier to do his thing, he's not going to complain.  Right now, his thing is freeing Moon Knight from his drugged stupor and ruining the mysterious Mr. Smith's plans to get Marc to give up Frenchie's location (which I am not entirely sure Marc even KNOWS).  Not because he cares about those plans per se, but because any time Moon Knight spends embroiled in someone else's plots is time taken away from being embroiled in Zodiac's plots.  So, lots of violence and the return of one of the few old Moon Knight antagonists not to grace the pages of MacKay's Moon Knight comics.  Both the focus on the absent Frenchie and the returning antagonist support the new title, as it's Marc Spector's life that's in the spotlight now, rather than his role as the Fist of Khonshu, or his Vengeance, etc.  Recommended.  $3.99, rated Teen+ (rather a lot of blood)

MAD about DC #1: DC - MAD Magazine stopped publishing new issues a while back, years after they started being published by DC, and this is not technically an issue of MAD (although it looks like MAD rose from the dead to judge by the subscription ad in back of this).  Rather, it's more like reviving Marvel's What The?! series with a one-shot of MAD-inflected DC stories, plus a few classic features done up in DC (like Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions). The quality of the pieces ranges from cringe or boring through pretty good, as one might expect from a humor anthology these days (SNL is a big example of "cringe as a substitute for funny" right now, and that tone does infect a lot of the pieces in this book).  One thing that made this not feel like a "real" MAD issue is that there's no parodies.  It's actually Superman, Batman, and so forth appearing in the stories, rather than Sooperdooperman or whatnot.  Like, yeah, they have the right to use the actual characters, but it doesn't feel like a real MAD issue without the goofy Not Brand Ecch renames.  Not even an actual Sergio Aragones strip is enough to do that for me, sadly.  Mildly recommended.  $7.99, rated ages 13 and up (some crude humor).

Gatchaman #16: Mad Cave - As promised at the end of last issue, the plotline with the Neo-Blackbirds and the mysterious new "also fights Galactor but might not count as an ally" is dropped entirely for something that feels like a fill-in issue, despite being written by the regular scribe.  It's another downtime-gets-interrupted story (Humphries seems to like those), this time at a ski resort, which introduces...another mysterious new "also fights Galactor but might not count as an ally."  Is he just using the main book to canonize all his childhood fanfic OCs?  Two "cooler than the regular team" characters in two issues, both showing up and doing a better job of stopping Galactor than the Science Ninja Team really feels like he's run out of stories and is just trying to find excuses to launch a bunch of new characters.  Meh.  The actual scripting and art are decent, but the plotting ain't.  Very mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen (fantasy violence)

Thundarr the Barbarian #2: Dynamite - Time travel shenanigans are afoot, and it's not clear to me whether the "Thundarr in the arena" scenes are pure flashback, or a view into an altered timeline.  Since the original cartoon didn't really go into detail about what the trio did before they started roaming the wastelands fighting wizards, it really could be either option, in the second case setting up the idea that no matter what alters the future, Thundarr, Ookla and Ariel find each other, even if not under the best of circumstances.  This is definitely one of those issues that's hard to evaluate in isolation, if not completely Written For The Trade.  There's a bunch of ways this could play out, some of them interesting and some of them weak cliches, and I don't know the writer from anywhere else so I can't even begin to speculate which of those ways it'll go.  Mildly recommended for now, but could become retroactively higher if the story's resolution works well for me.  $4.99, rated Teen (fantasy violence)

Vampirella #12: Dynamite - This really felt like it was supposed to last another issue but had to wrap up quickly so that next month the book could relaunch with another #1 (probably going back to the age of 6-issue series strung together).  There's some slow and fully played scenes, as well as fight scenes that resolve in a couple panels via plot device.  Things are more or less cleaned up, although the next arc appears to be more of a "meanwhile, back in the present" deal so there's no rush other than ensuring the timeline isn't in danger YET.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen+ for violence, undead, corpse chunks, and a little prurient stuff.  

Sonja Reborn #6 (of 6): Dynamite - This issue starts after the climactic battle, then goes back to set it up and play it out in flashback, which is a fairly typical Priest storytelling choice.  The series ends on a sort of cliffhanger, and while the final page proclaims Red Sonja will return in May,but that's a completely unrelated series by a different author, the followup for this series slated for 2027.  And by a sort of cliffhanger, I mean Maggie's personal storyline.  The Light versus Dark clash is resolved in a typically murky fashion suited to the Hyperborean Age...Dark is not necessarily evil and Light is not necessarily good, and gods in general are jerks who ill-use mortals who get caught up in their games.  I didn't mind the art as much this time around, maybe Miracolo is growing on me a little.  (If the followup series falls through, I wonder if Maggie will show up in Vampirella, looking for the gateway under Los Angeles mentioned in Vampi #12...?)  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen+ for lots of bloody violence and a charnel pit full of dead kids.

Star Trek Lower Decks #17-18: IDW - Sheridan's first arc wraps up, and...it's okay.  Some of the running gags worked, others didn't, but he committed to them all and they all pretty much tied into the plot at some point.  That said, the plot itself did lean pretty hard on "and then character from a previous story shows up to save the day" without justifying most of them.  Again, not exactly sure I want to keep reading this title, kinda coasting at this point.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99 each, no rating.

Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theater Presents Romeo & Juliet and Godzilla: IDW - The title story is not by Tom Scioli, it's written by Adam Tierney with art by Sean Peacock, neither of whom I recognize.  Our story is set in fair Verona, where the rivalry between the Montagues and Capulets isn't slowed down even a little by repeated incursions by Godzilla and Mothra (the Chobijin play the role of narrators, appropriately), and there's even a DaVinci-tech version of Mecha-Godzilla in play.  The story is of necessity VERY abridged, really just hitting the famous scenes with minimal connective tissue and a lot of potential loose ends literally stepped on by Godzilla.  Most of the broad strokes play out the same way, but a notable exception is the duel between Mercutio and Tybalt...Romeo is basically just a bystander to it, although he still gets blamed for Tybalt's death (I guess his mere presence distracted Tybalt at the wrong moment, leading to being smooshed by Godzilla's tail...at least that's how the Capulet patriarch sees it).  All in all, I guess it was okay, but it lacked some of Scioli's insane energy.  Scioli does write and draw the Robin Hood backup, which will run through the next several Monsterpiece Theaters.  I was not aware that the fens of England were deep enough to hide Godzilla under their waters, but Scioli has never been a stickler for details like that.  Mildly recommended.  $7.99, no rating, but some blood and over the top violence.

Expected next time: Okay, NEXT month is probably a skip month.

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 (Ben Yee insists I was first, I'm not so sure), hopes Godzilla at the Mountains of Madness will be part of Monsterpiece Theater, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.

 

"Things only Ichi can do?  Like what?"  "Mostly really dumb things, probably." - Kumugi and Desscaras, Ichi the Witch vol 2