Dave's Capsules for October 2026

 

Archive of older reviews

Items of Note (Strongly Recommended or otherwise worthy): Ichi the Witch vol 5

In this installment: Voting Is Your Super-Power!, Wolf's Daughter vol 4, Monster Cats vol 4, Chainsaw Man vol 22, Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 15, Ichi the Witch vol 5, My Pal Weird Al, The Moonlit Spiral, Cursed Princess Club vol 6

"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: VisionQuest is supposed to finish early in November, I'll review it next month.  So far it looks promising, but I can see a lot of ways they could flub the Big Reveal.

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.

A sadly timeless warning.

Voting Is Your Super-Power!: Clover Press - Just before I wrapped this up and posted it, I got an email from Clover Press presenting a free (for a limited time) PDF of this book, which is a collection of old "get out there and vote" PSA comics.  Of course, we're talking Golden Age and early Silver Age here (with a smattering of short bits from earlier), so while their hearts are in the right place there can be some pretty jarring structural bigotry at play (like the "threat" that if you don't that empty-headed blonde lady from the office might get to pick your government for you).  On the other hand, there's also ones put out by the NAACP, including one done by Larry Lieber, which help balance things out a bit.  The NAACP stories do follow about the same script in the infodump panels, although laws had changed slightly in the years between them.  Julie Newmar provides the introduction, and the editor who compiled the book has a text piece after that which explains the background of the included works as well as others of the time that weren't included.  Voting is recommended, if it's available to you.  Free PDF until Nov 6, 2026.  Hardcopy looks to be $12.99 at the Clover Press store.  All ages, although "of its time" content warnings do apply.

 

Expected next month: Things are back off track, so likely Nancy Drew Ep 6 next month instead.

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.

Wolf's Daughter vol 4: Seven Seas Entertainment - The three-way friendship between Tsukino, Hayate, and Kirito slowly develops without too much drama, so it's time to introduce a new element.  Turns out that while Kirito prefers to live apart from other white wolves, he knows them and they know him and they want him to return to their clan.  Kirito's birth name is Mihaku, another situation where not knowing the Japanese spelling makes it hard to pick from meanings, but it probably means something like "great jewel," which is appropriate given his role as son of their leader.  We find that Kirito wasn't abandoned so much as orphaned.  He could've rejoined his people years ago, but decided that they weren't really his people...even being orphaned a second time by the death of his human foster father didn't change his mind on that.  Definitely an identity metaphor in there.  But for all that I'm focusing on this, it's only a fairly small part of the volume, and the other white wolf's claim about gray wolves is more immediately important.  This volume is the reader's first indication that gray wolves like Tsukino have happened before...she's rare, but not unique.  She (and we) still don't know the truth of her parentage, but white wolves other than Kirito do not think too highly of grays.  Tsukino doesn't quite spiral, but she's definitely in disequilibrium for much of this volume, burdened by the weight of so much metaphorical and literal in-between-ness.  She's neither white nor black.  Neither fully human nor fully (culturally) wolf.  She's an adult (her 19th birthday happens during this volume), but not fully adult (she's not old enough to drink, despite working at a winery).  She graduates from high school but won't be going to college.  She wants to live a normal(ish) life but seems tied to a generational mystery.  Even her relationship with Hayate is somewhere in between.  Everything seems to be on slow burn, but burning nonetheless.  That's a lot of pressure for anyone, so it's understandable that she does something potentially very stupid in an attempt to figure stuff out.  Recommended.  $13.99/$17.99Cn, rated Teen 13+ for some violence and relationship stuff.

Cat Sith promises to not
knock your mug off the table.

Monster Cats vol 4: Seven Seas Entertainment - As has been the case since volume 2, there's a mix of recurring monsters and some new ones.  Mostly in the form of single page 3 panel bits, although some of them continue an extra page or two, or pick up on previous gags.  And, as before, there's a mix of purely mythical/magical behaviors and stuff real cats do but exaggerated slightly.  A good Sensible Chuckle read, with occasional bits of sarcasm or other darker humor. Recommended.  $14.99/$18.99Cn, rated Ages 10+ for monsters, I guess.

Chainsaw Man vol 22: Viz/Shonen Jump - It's Yoru/Asa and Denji versus Fake Chainsaw Man, Falling Devil, and...well, Fami is there too.  She's trying her best, honest.  Denji continues to emotionally grow up little by little, and always at the worst possible times, of course.  He makes selfish excuses for this at first, but eventually starts to realize that his occasional reflexive self-loathing is justified, because he really has been a pretty horrible person.  One might argue that in the world into which Denji was born, it's hard to not be pretty horrible one way or another, especially given how he was functionally feral for a while and is even more poorly socialized than his peers.  However, when the scales fall from your eyes, such arguments are little comfort even if he was sophisticated enough to grasp them.  But he's pretty dumb, and knows it, which makes it hard to get him out of his funk in the middle of a fight.  Fortunately (??) Yoru gets a sudden power-up which lets her save the two of them from the Falling Devil, but you know, she's the War Devil and a power-up for her is probably bad news for everyone else.  It's always been fairly clear that this book would end with some sort of apocalypse or Ragnarok or whatnot, but the timetable has been sped up.  Series as a whole is recommended, but this isn't really a good place to start.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Older Teen for splattergore, vore, and Platonic Forms.

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 15: Viz - AST/Magilumiere have a new task before them, preparing for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the privatization of Magical Girls, and there's a general feeling of things ending and people moving on.  While the volume 1 core group is probably all sticking around, we see indications of pretty much all the other Magilumiere employees moving on in one way or another.  Moving up into management, or back into research, or even leaving for more personal reasons...if volume 16 is to be the end, it's being set up pretty well.  (Checking Wikipedia, it's ending in vol 18, so there's time for some more complications.)  A good chunk of the volume is catching up on a somewhat neglected character, giving him three chapters of struggling with where his career and life are going now that he's not just an apprentice...and yes, some of it feels a little too obviously like wanting to make sure he gets a personal arc resolution before the finale without needing to do it in a summary.  But that's okay.  This series has from the start been about workplace friendships and how they change or do not change people, with the magical girls fighting supernatural monsters as the flashy advertisement.  It's also become about how the younger generation inherits the world left to them by the older generation, and the final arc looks to be mainly about the responsibility the older generation owes to them.  Recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Teen (fantasy violence, if almost none of that this volume)

Ichi the Witch vol 5: Viz/Shonen Jump - YEESH.  I shouldn't have preordered this, it made it to the shelf locally on the 6th but my copy (which did ship on the 6th) ended up lost in UPS's system for several weeks, finally arriving on the 24th.  Worth the wait, though.  Ichi's role is almost entirely supportive here, not a combat support role though, an emotionally supportive role.  This nearly two volume arc is all about Gokuraku. his family, and his country.  For all the big explosions and giant majik beasts and Desscaras snark, the two most important turning points in the hunt come from Ichi's honest curiosity about the meaning of family.  Gokuraku tells him (in flashback to events between scenes of vol 4), then shows Ichi and himself.  And Gokuraku's decade of unstinting effort to free his people finally got through to his sister Richia, who while still unaware of what she had lost to Bakugami, realized that he wouldn't be trying so hard if she hadn't lost something important.  Then, it's all over but the recriminations and rebuilding.  The book still has the humor and snark that drew me to it in the first place, but this volume has a lot of heart as well.  Strongly recommended.  $11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Teen (fantasy violence, a bit of magical-cyborg body horror, loads of sarcasm that might go over the heads of younger readers)

Expected next month: The cascading failures of solicitation dates continue.  I will probably have Infini-T Force vol 10 (of 10), Manga Classics: Journey to the West vol 1 (now delayed into November), After God vol 10, Way of the Househusband vol 17.  There's a bunch of stuff slated for November 23 which I probably won't have in hand until December, but there's a chance Go! Go! Loser Ranger! vol 19 will be on the shelf so I can get that before the end of the month.  (Just as well, I literally have nothing on my schedule for December prior to the 29th, and that's not gonna be on the shelf, so at least I'll have some late-delivered November stuff for that month's reviews.  Well, something that I listed in my spreadsheet as "check on the shelf" that was originally solicited for August is now set for December 1, so I'll probably get that just to have something.)

Other Trades:

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

My Pal Weird Al: Wagon Wheel Comics - This is a magazine-sized anthology of comics relating how Weird Al intersected with the lives of various fans (and one employee).  This does lead to a certain similarity among the stories, what with people meeting Al at concerts or in the hotel or whatnot, but it's not completely redundant and everyone has their own story to tell, ranging from touching interactions over the years to a single "whoops" moment.  There's also an extensive (but probably not exhaustive) text piece covering Al's appearances or references in various comics over the decades (yes, Cheese Sandwich is mentioned).  A few chuckles here and there, a lot of "Al's a really nice guy," and that bit of scholarship.  I'm not sure how available this is outside of the Kickstarter, and there's no cover price on the magazine itself, but if you're a Weird Al fan and don't have this, it's worth trying to find a copy.  

The Snail Spiral, or
Sniral.

The Moonlit Spiral: Candlewick Press - After mainly getting out there with licensed properties like the Spider-Man and his amazing pets books, this is an original SF/F work from Mike Maihack.  I suppose you could say it's a secondary world techno-fantasy, although one where everyone speaks and writes English because all of the anagram puzzles require English.  As tends to happen in works aimed at preteens, there's not a lot of "explain why this is" in the worldbuilding, if this is meant to be a far future post-megawhoops Earth there's nothing in the story that cares about that so it doesn't come up.  There's lost civilizations, treasure, maybe magic, definitely modern-ish technology run by bioenergy provided by snails, and the main character's parents loved word puzzles.  That's all you really need to know about the setting.  Structurally, this is a treasure hunt involving a map and riddles, with kids having an adventure while trying to uncover family secrets and maybe help restore a bit of wonder to the world.  The stakes are very personal, which works well here.  The age of treasure hunting is over, all the worthwhile finds have been made, science has advanced to the point people don't need to scavenge for remnants of the past to survive, and if the world is duller for it...oh well.  Living in interesting times can suck, after all.  The cast is fairly tight: a teenaged boy who rejects the idea of magic out of bitterness over his parents' death, his best friend who definitely believes in magic and claims to talk to the bioenergetic snails, a strange fox girl who shows up one night and is clearly tied to the final mystery the boy's parents died trying to unravel, and a mysterious and ominous man who pursues them.  There's also the old bookbinder who raised the boy, and a few other characters with speaking roles along the way, but the story is mainly those four.  And a large purple cat, but the cat doesn't talk, not even to snails.  There's some interesting twists along the way, but no Pullman-style "the world needs to be boring or it's doomed" crap ending in case you worry about such things. Warning, if looking for this on the shelf, check the start of the M's as well as the middle.  My local store's shelf stocker thought the aesthetic spiral in the first O was an @, and alphabetized it as if the title was M@onlit Spiral (they have since fixed this).  Recommended.  $14.99/$19.99Cn, ages 8-12.

Cursed Princess Club vol 6: WebToon Unscrolled - So, a big chunk of the cast now has Secrets that they're keeping from friends and loved ones, even outside of those who are keeping their curses secret.  Some are "they would be in more danger if they knew," others are "they might hate me if they knew," but regardless of why, a lot of the cast members are nervous and guilt-wracked as this volume starts.  Just in time for the big once-every-five-years gala that makes the events thrown in previous volumes look like a child's tea party!  The middle chunk of the volume takes time out to reveal some of the secrets of the deceased mother of the main character in the form of reading a diary that was nicked in vol 5.  Along the way the big final conflict of the series is foreshadowed, although not so broadly that it's obviously going to be more than just another personality conflict.  Things have gotten serious enough that there's less of the whimsical humor of earlier volumes (but there's still some), but haven't really turned up the drama dial all the way yet either, so it's a lot of middles without much payoff, making for something that isn't quite as good a read on its own.  So, merely Recommended instead of strongly recommended.  The series as a whole remains strongly recommended, though.  $18.99/$24.99Cn, over 300 pages full color.  No age recommendations, although there's some bits that might be too scary for kids or too innuendo-y.

Expected next month: Cursed Princess Club vol 6 was going to be expected, but unlike all my delayed manga volumes, it came out early.  So, nothing I'm planning on, but there's always crowdfunding fulfillment and "hey, that looks interesting".

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.)

 

My latest shipment went out right at the end of the month, kinda like the one in last month's review, but didn't actually arrive before the end of the month.  So this is a skip month as expected.

Expected next time: Batman/Superman/Weird Al: World's Weirdest, Fantastic Four #16-18, Gatchaman #21-22, Godzilla Monsterpiece Theater: Kaiju of Oz, Marvel Knights: the World to Come #6 (of 6), Marc Spector: Moon Knight #8-9, Street Fighter Masters: Juri (an Adam Warren one-shot), Vampirella #6-7. 

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 has working vision insurance again, is an occasional science advisor in fiction, and part of the development team for the upcoming City of Titans MMO.

 

"I don't love Denji!  I'm in love with...America!" - Yoru, the War Devil, Chainsaw Man vol 22