Dave's Capsules for June 2026

 

Archive of older reviews

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

In this installment: Nancy Drew Secret of the Old Clock #3, The Daughter of the Demon Lord Is Too Kind!! vol 1, Magical Girl Dandelion vol 1-2, Chainsaw Man vol 21, Ichi the Witch vol 3, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc vol 13, Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord vol 7, Punderworld vol 2, Fantastic Four #10-12, Marc Spector: Moon Knight #3-5, Gatchaman #17-18, Red Impulse #1-2, Thundarr the Barbarian #3-4, Vampirella #1-2. 

"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.  I mean, a new season of My Adventures with Superman started, but even if I felt like reviewing it, I'll wait until the season is complete.  (Not exactly thrilled by the super awkward romantic subplot between Kara and Jimmy, though.)

Expected next month: I don't really try to keep up with DVD/BluRay/Streaming release schedules anymore, and I don't see movies in the theater, so I honestly don't know if there'll be something next month.  I mean, Supergirl certainly won't be available except in theaters until much later.

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.

 

Nancy Drew Secret of the Old Clock #3: Patreon.com - The book's chapter 6 takes up most of this episode, with a couple pages of chapter 7 ending on a cliffhanger.  There isn't much new going on here, just reinforcing how absolutely deserving all of the other potential heirs are and how horrible the Toppams are.  The dialogue is getting better, either "Keane" was hitting her stride or Espinosa is feeling freer to adjust the source material.  And it's not that there's zero plot advancement, it's just buried in the reinforcement scenes.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99 (or included with some tiers).

 

The Fake Alchemist vol 2 hit LibraryPass at the end of the month, but I don't really feel like reviewing other than to say it's starting to feel like the author changed their mind several times about what the plot would be.  It's also getting a bit more fetishy. If I change my mind, well, next month is looking really slim anyway.  I'll do it then.

 

Expected next month: Nancy Drew #4 might come out, depending on Espinosa's hand health.

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.

Adorable AND important to the plot.

The Daughter of the Demon Lord Is Too Kind!! vol 1: Yen Press - The premise of this is pretty much in the title, although with the added complication that the demon lord's planned conquest of the mortal realm has been put on hold until his daughter's un-demonly behavior can be sorted out.  This was a title I had on my spreadsheet as "check on the shelf," because while it did look interesting, it also looked like it could lean in the Lolicon direction so I wanted to skim it before committing to a purchase.  (Later in the volume there's a trainee succubus who'd be loli except she's comically bad at her job and it's clearly played more for laughs than prurient interest.)  Anyway, Lord Ahriman's daughter Doux, who looks to be about 5-6 years old in human terms, is relentlessly kind to everyone and everything.  She uses healing magic on the slaves, feeds strays, and generally acts against every instinct a demon is supposed to have.  Ahriman can't concentrate on the planned invasion while he worries about his firstborn and heir growing up so...wrong.  There's a sort of Munsters aesthetic going on here, where most of the demons are pretty regular people who just happen to think pain and blood and spooky stuff are good and proper...and Doux is the "ugly daughter" who is actually cute and nice by human standards.  (Personal theory I doubt will ever be verified for refuted because this is more of a gag premise book: by unifying the demons, who all embody negative traits, Ahriman created an environment where demonic rebellion is the status quo to be rebelled against, and thus the only way to escalate is to rebel against rebellion, if you will.  Demons destroy societies, but now have a society that can be destroyed...by Doux.  She will metaphorically kill them with literal kindness...even by the end of this first volume, it looks like the conquest of the mortal realms will be done Doux's way rather than according to any of her father's plans!)  Anyway, most of the chapters follow a formula: Jahi, Ahriman's right hand demon, puts Doux through a new trial designed to awaken her demonic instincts, and it fails, but Ahriman is too doting to see it that way and Jahi avoids punishment.  I'm not sure how much longer the premise can carry this book before it gets boring, but I'm willing to pick up volume 2 to see.  Note, the first season of the anime is on Crunchyroll, and it looks like this volume covers the same ground as the first four episodes, if not necessarily in the same order (and with a few bits not mentioned in the CR episode summaries).  Volume 2 has not yet been solicited for release.  Recommended.  $13.00/$17.00Cn, rated Teen LV (a little light innuendo, fantasy violence against monsters, some visibly injured humans).

Magical Girl Dandelion vol 1-2: Viz - This wasn't one of the titles I was referring to vaguely last month, although it was one I saw in preorders but wasn't interested enough to order.  Rather, it was alphabetically near what I was looking for, which not only turns out to have come out months ago with B&N's site mistakenly saying it was pushed back, but vol 1 of that is no longer even visible on their revamped crappy shop.com-template website.  (I have already added significantly to the local store manager's list of complaints to send to corporate about that.)  Anyway, on to this series, where the high concept is "Girl is friends with one of the bad guys since childhood, and now she's a magical girl and this is going to be AWKWARD."  Stepping back, protagonists of sufficient power (magical girls count) always have to pick a side with regards to the status quo: defend it or upend it.  Normie protagonists can just sort of live their lives and ignore that issue, but anyone capable of making a difference in fiction is going to end up defending, upending, or both in some order or even simultaneously.  Exceptionally powerful characters can't help but threaten the status quo even if they want to defend it (at least, at first), but one solution that gives the protagonist a bit more agency is to make them powerful but not uniquely so.  The first superheroes in a world, or the first magical girls, will cause consternation by their very existence, so even if they'd rather not remake the world they're kind of stuck with the job.  Thus, a useful workaround even in brand new settings, is to establish a years-long or generations-long tradition of powered individuals so that protagonists who'd rather just fight the baddies can do so without needing to give a lot of thought to how the government views them.  Those issues have been litigated (sometimes literally) already.  

Tanpopo lives in a world along those lines.  There's an overall magical girl organization, there's mandatory school tests for magical potential, there's standard civil defense stuff in the event of a Fiend attack, and so forth.  She's never known a world without the fight between Magical Girls (who are all flower-themed) and Fiends, and lost her parents to Fiends at a young age.  She could just go along to get along, follow the instructions of her sempai Magical Girl Peony, and become another protector of the innocent.  But a couple things force Tanpopo to buck the system.  One is the high concept...when the fiend killed her parents, she was saved by a different fiend who kind of adopted her as his little sister, so she knows not all fiends are evil (even if he's a jerk a lot of the time).  The other is a spoiler, but it forces her to try to find a way other than "blow the fiend to nothingness," which is the standard operating practice.  Importantly, while the world has dealt with fiends for years, it hasn't been generations, so it's reasonable that no one else has seriously yet looked for a Better Way (and survived the attempt, anyway).  Also important, from a dramatic point of view, she quickly finds that she can't save everyone, but doesn't let that stop her from trying again and again.  Meanwhile, Shade (her fiend friend) and Magical Girl Peony have the sort of chemistry that suggests that in a dozen volumes or so they're going to end up in bed together (in real life that chemistry just leads to restraining orders and assault charges, but this is fiction, and there's way too much sibling energy between Shade and Dandelion for the romance to go that way).  Recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Teen.

Chainsaw Man vol 21: Viz - The Old Age Devil situation resolves via Denji being Denji, and then it's off to grapple with feelings and the potential end of all mankind in descending order of importance.  Denji, Yoru (War Devil) and Asa are really developing into an extremely toxic polycule where Denji might be the most sane of the trio but also easily the most stupid so it balances out.  I am reminded of a lot of Evangelion, where no matter how much information NERV has about what's going on, in the end Shinji is such a broken young man that he finds a way to sabotage it.  Denji is more feral than Shinji (I hold that Shinji was deliberately raised wrong as part of his father's plan to hijack his bosses' plan), but definitely just as good at derailing plans from sheer "That Boy's Not Right"-ism.  It actually makes things worse that he's been growing as a person and even maturing a bit, because now his handlers can't be sure he'll do the predictable wrong thing so they can aim him correctly.  The big (if initially confusing) reveal in the final chapter, though, for once has nothing to do with Denji and yet plans have gone straight in the crapper.  Recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Older Teen (lots of bisected people, devouring of innards, and general "this would be so much nastier in color" violence).

Ichi the Witch vol 3: Viz - Okay, time to get a little serious for a bit, which does bring down the rollicking sarcasm a notch.  The God Majik introduced at the end of last volume is established as Ichi's final hunt, but this isn't the last volume because as most first meetings with end bosses go, it's inconclusive.  We also find out its link to Desscaras, which gives her a bit more depth despite her concerted efforts at being shallow and vain.  I mean, it's not a parade of pathos, and there's still plenty of good comedy, it's just more tinged with darkness and regret and compensation for pain.  There's a nice bit where Desscaras does something that looks very touching and kind, then gets revealed as horrible and selfish...and then gets revealed as touching if not necessarily kind under all that.  She's a better person than she presents herself to be, but she's still committed to the branding.  Ichi himself remains a very simple person with straightforward desires and ethics, but he's the axis around which the other characters are positioned, the pole star orienting all their more complex actions.  Also, his occasionally stupid and naive actions are funny, giving him more nuance would just make that more sad than funny.  Anyway, as much as this stuff is necessary in the long term, it does bring the mood down a bit, hopefully we'll be back to firing on all cylinders next volume.  Recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Teen (fantasy violence and lots of teeth).

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 13: Viz - So, it turns out that not only was the first arc antagonist not done yet, but there was still Secret Origins left to tell, and we get both as the biggest Kaii extermination battle to date is thrown into motion, echoing the calamity of sixteen years ago that set all of this in motion.  The reason for the names of Magilumiere itself and the Alice System, the details of the event that drove a wedge between AST CEO Koga and Magilumiere CEO Shigemoto, and the foundations of their very different philosophies for running magical girl operations.  They once shared a vision, but trauma skewed it.  Okay, so most of the page count is devoted to the Big Damn Kaii Battle, but the emotional punch of the volume is in the quiet moments at the start as well as the flashback that runs almost to the last page.  Volume 11 had a lot of payoff, and I wouldn't say this volume has more, but it's definitely in the same ballpark, as well as setting up a potential long-term threat to carry the series past this fight (unless this fight is going to last two or more volumes and lead to a series conclusion, but volume 15 is already solicited for October so we've got at least that much more ahead).  Recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Teen (fantasy violence, off-screen death and on-screen major destruction).

Easygoing Territory Defense by the Optimistic Lord vol 7: Seven Seas - The reward for a job well done is another job, as the saying goes, and Lord Van could only do a good job for so long before someone in a position to give him another job noticed.  This is when he gets that notice.  I was mistakenly thinking it would be his father come for a visit, but it's rather higher up the aristocratic food chain, and his long term plan of slacking off in safety and luxury is imperiled by the fact he ends up being very competent in front the last person he wanted really noticing him.  Worse, he's very competent at the dawn of what might be a full-out war!  So, exactly what he'd hoped his "disappointing" magical skill would keep him very very far away from.  As one of the sub-sub-genre of isekai characters whose main "superpower" is the fact he's nice to people of all classes (his OP magic just gives him a chance to survive upsetting the apple cart by going against the social strata), he's got a solid desire that everyone get along and live long happy lives.  War does not permit that.  Can he pull a Doctor and everyone lives?  Can he terrify the enemy into surrender with the threat of his insane weaponry?  Maybe.  He IS the Optimistic Lord, after all, and no matter how bad things get he's bound to try to find a way to make things better.  On the other hand, the experience might break his naive modern sensibilities and he'll have to claw back into the light.  Writer Sou Akaike is taking this series into a different genre, at least for a while, which is always tricky, but can pay off handsomely if done well.  Recommended.  $13.99/$17.99Cn, rated Teen 13+ (war, some on-screen death, a little romantic tension and age-gap concerns).

Expected next month: Well, the new B&N site makes it a little harder to be sure what's actually coming now, but probably Infini-T Force #8 (originally supposed to be this month), and...that's it until July 28's Dinosaur Sanctuary and Happy Kanako's Killer Life (assuming it isn't pushed back AGAIN).  July may be a pretty slim month even if I get another shipment of floppies.

Other Trades:

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

Does it have the same
symbolism if she has no
shoes to kick off?

Punderworld vol 2: Image/Top Cow - Finally out after multiple resolicitations.  I actually read all but the extras months ago via Linda Sejic's Patreon, but it'd been long enough I needed to reread it, which is certainly worth doing.  Where volume 1 was pretty much just an occasionally scary meet cute, the stakes are raised repeatedly in this volume.  Demeter discovers her daughter is gone.  Persephone discovers she's stuck in the underworld despite Hades's best efforts to get her out.  Oaths are made.  And along the way more cosmological threats are presented, including a few things that might be made better by both the classic ending of this myth and the bad light in which it casts Hades himself.  (He's an adorable nerd with poor social skills, a far cry from the dark and fearsome lord of the underworld myth makes him out to be.  Zeus is exactly as myth portrays him, though.)  Also, Cerberus appears and is the goodest bois, so it's not all terror and existential threats.  The extras include more character design notes, plus a chapter from a related series Fine Print by Stjepan Sejic, which is apparently set well after the Punderworld mythic age and uses the same basic cosmology and has Hades involved.  Recommended.  $16.99/$22.99Cn, rated Teen+ (discussion of death, some flirting).

Expected next month: Orion, Spider-Man: Mighty Mayhem

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 #10: Marvel - The conclusion of the Invincible Woman arc.  I don't really think North stuck the landing here.  Basically the alien invasion B-plot seemed to only exist to give them a reason to bring IW to Earth, so she could be distracted for a few seconds and then a rather risky (in that it risked the lives of everyone on Earth) plan could be enacted to beat her.  I mean, after two issues of "she can easily kill the entire Marvel Universe" I don't think there was much way to resolve it in a satisfying way, particularly doing it in one more issue while also servicing a B-plot, but...meh.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen. 

 

Fantastic Four #11-12: Marvel - These are done-in-one stories, although each deals with the wake of both the Invincible Woman arc and the various Doom-related stuff that happened over in Crossover Land.   #11 picks up the whole "Maria Hill being ominous" subplot and lets Ben be more than just the guy who hits stuff, but I don't have a lot of faith in there being any lasting impact of it...mostly because if the FF isn't allowed to deal with their signature foe Doctor Doom in their own book, I don't have a lot of faith in Marvel editorial paying any heed to anything else North writes.  #12 technically picks up on the B-plot from #9-10, but it would've worked almost the same without the previous single appearance of the antagonists.  It was a cute one-off with Reed and Johnny, though, and Sue's exasperated line about having to write another archaeology paper was almost my pull quote for the end of the review.  #11 mildly recommended, #12 recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen.

 

Marc Spector: Moon Knight #3-5: Marvel -  A frenetic fight-search-fight during which Moon Knight can't even be bothered to replace his torn mask, it suffers from two things plot-wise.  One, Marc has to abandon the A-plot entirely to go after the reason his team didn't come for him in the mail room from hell.  That sort of veering off can end up working in the long run, and I've been reading MacKay's MK long enough to trust he isn't just bored with the plot and trying something else, but it's really something that reads better in the trade collection...even with three issues in a single chunk to read, it feels scattered.  The other is what I think of as the Knull Problem...you have a cool character or premise that's dangerous and maybe a little spooky and works well on its own, but then suddenly there's an entire society of them that's been around forever and is well-known to the experts in the field, even though it was never brought up before.  Oh, and they have a godlike ruler/progenitor/whatever, and that's the new threat.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen+ (a lot of blood).

 

Gatchaman #17-18: Mad Cave - Yeah, the Ascended Beings are here for an extended arc, and I feel like Vexxarr.  Great, more meddling "higher beings" who claim to have attained perfection but are still flawed and simply in denial about it.  These particular ones might actually have been foreshadowed, but to be honest the main series writing has been unmemorable most of the time, and without going back and digging through all my back issues (because of course there isn't an editor's note pointing the reader at which issue) I can't be sure this was something shown on screen or just a retcon.  On the plus side, the Gatchaman team's interactions with the Ass-ended Beings ring true to their characters (they'd like to believe, but they've been tricked before, etc.), and the inevitable fall from grace will probably happen next issue.  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen. 

 

"I think they saw
through our disguises."

Red Impulse #1-2: Mad Cave - So, in the Sandy Frank dubs, there was an air squadron that sometimes showed up to help, supposedly from the Planet Riga, led by its prince.  But there was no interstellar travel in the original Gatchaman material, the the Rigans were actually the "mercenary" group Red Impulse (plausible deniability for Dr. Nambu), and their masked commander was the supposedly-dead father of G-1, Ken.  (I sometimes wonder if the Battle of the Planets writers removed that to avoid comparison with Racer X.)  If there's meant to be an overall arc to this series, it's not yet apparent, as each issue is self-contained.  While there is some aerial combat of the sort Red Impulse is known for, both of these issues are more along the lines of "get out of the jets and infiltrate/fight/scout before getting back in the jets to get away from the hornet's nest thus stirred up."  On a trope-following level, I get that the Red Impulse characters focused on so far have distinctive facial hair so that the readers can tell them apart when they're in various cowls/masks, but it strikes me as an espionage no-no.  "Huh, I don't remember anyone in this base with a pencil mustache...."  Maybe that's how Berg Katse figures them out so easily.  As usual, Orlando's writing is better than that of the main series, but so far there doesn't seem to be much to this beyond, "Hey, we have these other characters to play with."  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen+. 

Thundarr the Barbarian #3-4: Dynamite - Two timelines across three different years, taking place before, during, and after a time travel intervention, with the promise of a second time travel intervention.  This REALLY feels like writing for the trade, and I do wonder if the end of the arc is meant to establish a new timeline that doesn't have to follow the details of the cartoon except where they feel like it.  It just seems like a lot of work to establish a new backstory when they could've just revealed it as the only backstory through flashbacks.  Perhaps the goal is a huge temporal Red Queen's Race or Predestination Paradox in which time travel can't ever really change things.  If anything, this removes whatever agency Ariel originally had in defying her father and freeing Thundarr and Ookla, because now she's doing it to follow a feeling she has that the timeline is wrong.  She's doing it because other-Ariel did.  (Oh, and the origin of the Sunsword, breathlessly promised in the blurb for #4, is quite prosaic.  I mean, technically the details are a spoiler, but they're also boring so I won't bother "revealing" them.)  The fundamental plot of "Wizards decide to go back in time and make the world over to their liking" certainly has promise in a science & sorcery setting like this, it just feels like they're padding it out with too many extra timelines.  Okay, enough grousing, I do have something good to say about the title overall.  In a recent essay in ReacTor (https://reactormag.com/the-rebirth-of-sword-and-sorcery-and-the-death-of-the-weird/) Cynthia Ward bemoans the de-weirdification of the Sword and Sorcery genre.  This may be a nostalgia title, but at least it's not trying to tone down the weird.  If anything, Aaron is leaning into the bizarre mish-mash of science and sorcery, barbarism and the trappings of modernity.  Just, maybe he could've waited for the second arc to try recursive time loops?  Mildly recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen.

Vampirella #1-2 (Legacy #688-689): Dynamite - Yes, there's an obnoxious number of variant covers (88) to accompany the new number one.  I guess we're just to assume nothing went wrong after the resolution of the previous numbering, since we're back in the present and dealing with the Draculina problems again, while people make a lot of references to Les Miserable (the "longer than Naruto and with more digressions" novel, not the musical).  Over the last year, there's been a palpable sense of "putting the toys back in the toybox for the next writer," but Dynamite decided they want Priest to keep going, so in #1 a lot of those toys get taken back off, dusted off, and run through a few bits of business to let any readers pulled in by the shiny #1 on the cover know what their deals are.  Several characters had been given, if not "happily ever afters," then "happily enough until they're needed again" situations, along with ways they could be pulled out of that.  Now it's time to get the gang back together, with Dracula still on his kick of wanting to take over Draculon (nominative determinism, eh?).  Doc Chary is back dealing with this nonsense again, and apparently Draculina really does look the same as Vampirella except for the hair (as opposed to "they look the same because the artist only knows one pretty lady face").  Oh, Vampirella does show up in her own book, and one of her running plot devices (the bounty hunting) is about to get a closer look.  A bit of a slow start, but recommended.  $4.99, rated Teen+ (blood and boobs, and does it count as fridging if the woman is brutally killed to motivate a female character?).

Expected next time: Might not be a skip month, since I'm getting the weekly DC Dream Girls series and should hit ten (the threshold for mailing out my pull) again by mid-July.  Likely more Fantastic Four, Thundarr, Gatchaman, Red Impulse, and Godzilla Monsterpiece Theater in addition.

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), finally got some rain around here, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.

 

"When I die, I come back to life...and I'm still never ready for it.  Somebody who can only kick the bucket once could never be mentally prepared to die." - Denji being surprisingly deep, Chainsaw Man vol 21