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even credited on the main title page, it's possible that the editors listed
are just overall Dark Horse editors and no one actually took editorial ownership of this book. It's a pity, the series has a lot of interesting
ideas with potential, but while some of the technical editing has improved
(the lettering is a lot more readable, although they're still doing some
weird "did no one tell them not to do that?" tricks connecting the balloons), it really feels like the whole thing needed a stronger editorial hand to develop the ideas better. Mildly recommended. $19.99/$25.99Cn

Expected next month: Nothing, although a couple of crowdfunds might fulfill, like the new anthology of Stardust comics referred to above.


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.)

Took almost two months to get enough floppies built up for a shipment,
and due to the vagaries of publication dates that resulted in three issues of Moon Knight. Also, all the back issues of Lower Decks came in, although I
had my shipment sent before #5 came out.

Ultraman x Avengers #4 (of 4): Marvel - For all the big battles and
cosmic stakes, this ended up feeling pretty anticlimactic. It did advance
some Ultraman plot threads, in case they get another series (nothing on the schedule for the next few months, at least), but like...underwhelming "defeat Galactus" resolution. Also, given how unlikely it is that any of this will
be relevant to the Marvel Universe characters going forwards, they sure got a lot of the focus. Mildly recommended. $4.99

Fantastic Four #28-29: Marvel - I have previously complained about how
the Fantastic Four seem to be so marginalized when Doctor Doom is stomping
all over the big event books lately, leading to things like Reed spending months trying to figure out how to get into the action and largely failing. Maybe North asked to be mostly left out, I dunno. But its kinda like having
an Ultron event and sidelining the Avengers, or a Sentinels event with all
the X-Men stuck in another dimension. Which, for all I know, they've also done...I don't read a lot of Marvel anymore and tend to avoid the mega events as much as feasible. This also means that I really only have idiosyncratic windows into those events, so I don't know if One World Under Doom is really meant to be a MAGA parable or if that's just North's take on it. Anyway, in #28 the event hasn't quite started and Reed and Sue go to talk to Dane
Whitman in an attempt to find a way to merge tech and magic to get past
Doom's barrier, ending up with a bit of archaeology along the way (since
that's Sue's PhD area). Sue gets to write the narrative captions, which do carry a bit of weight in some montage sequences, a duty she continues into
#29. Obviously they fail, because otherwise a dozen or so tie-in books would have to be cancelled, and #29 skips ahead to the New Normal. In an attempt
to get their minds off how they can't really do anything about Doom, Sue and Ben go out to lunch with She-Hulk, and discover a problem they can solve, at least a little. (Mainly helping clean up after a previous Big Event, whose neat resolution wasn't as neat as it had seemed.) It's a small victory, but since they're not allowed a big victory right now it's necessary lest they
fall into late-series CW Flash territory (22 episodes of failing to stop the master plan, then 1 episode succeeding). Anyway, there's some good bits, but they're Muzzled By The Narrative (a milder version of Doomed By The
Narrative, which they aren't despite Doom running the narrative), which is irksome. Basically, not allowed to do anything constructive yet because of external editorial fiat. Mildly recommended. $4.99 each.

Moon Knight Fist of Khonshu #4-6: Marvel - Before I get into anything general-plot-related, there's a really effective use of lettering fonts in
#5. A character reveals their true nature, and their font changes to
indicate said nature pretty clearly (for those who recognize it) a panel or
so before it gets spelled out. Nice work there, whether it was the writer's idea, letterer's initiative, or editor's input. Not so nice was the switch
in artists for #6. Domenico Carbone made several characters look like
petulant teenagers (including Marc Spector) and apparently thought that the
big bulky criminal mastermind whose build was very well explained in #5 had
to be made more "realistic" and slender. And also like a petulant teenager.
The work Pramanik put into giving the characters some CHARACTER was all sandblasted away into generic CW-approved hotties. These are good contrasting examples of how all the roles in making a comic are important, and one person can either elevate the overall work or drag it down. #4-5 are recommended,
but the art drags #6 down to merely mildly recommended. $3.99 each.

Gatchaman #6-7: Mad Cave - #6 is a one-off downtime adventure in which Jinpei (Keyop in the Sandy Frank dubs) drags everyone along on a quest for buried treasure. It's the sort of thing that might carry an 8-page backup story, but stretching it to a full issue makes it just drag. Very skippable. Back to actual Gatchaman action in #7 with the start of a new arc and a
rather abrupt increase in the cast size. The trainee quintet is joined by three other sets of five, who all get named and get to show up once before
the story moves on and resumes ignoring them. I get that Bunn is trying to expand the setting and address the whole "Why does Nambu only ever have five warriors when Galactor has an army?" issue, but the actual execution was a
bit awkward. Still, it's a story that's trying to go somewhere, an
improvement over #6. #6 is neutral, #7 is mildly recommended. $4.99 each.

Gatchaman: Only One Earth #1 (of 4): Mad Cave - I've commented before about how Battle of the Planets was significantly sanitized compared to the Gatchaman source material, but usually it's a matter of toning down the hits, adding dialogue claiming someone survived when they originally hadn't, etc. This miniseries is more broadly dark, the kind of plot that would've been placed on some "never heard of it before, won't see it again" alien world in Battle of the Planets...but which took place on Earth in the source material. The devastation and genocide set off by Galactor may take place in a
fictional nation, but it's still on Earth. Because, as the title points out, we only have the one, and a toxic hole blown in it is still everyone's
problem, not something safely at a remove in a distant star system. Tommy
Lee Edwards also plays up the friction between Ken and Joe that was a
recurring problem for the team in the original anime. In short, while a lot
of nostalgia revival comics lately just go dark because that sells better to aging fanboys, Gatchaman really was that dark and melodramatic, this is an honest extension of the original stories. The art's a bit on the scratchy side, especially when Nuno Plati is trying to do speed lines (there's a race involved in the plot) and they don't really come across right. The storytelling is definitely not decompressed, and things go to hell pretty briskly. Recommended. $4.99

Vampirella #674-675: Dynamite - The final issues before the inevitable
new number one. #674 wraps up Draculina's Dark World arc, and I think I'll need to go back and re-read it all in one sitting to be sure I have it
figured out. In theory it finishes explaining Draculina's deal, in practice
it kinda confused me more, but sometimes that'll happen. #675 uses a
Dr. Chary framing sequence around a previously untold story where Vampi
agrees to be committed for psychiatric observation for 72 hours, only to have one of her enemies come hunting in the mental institution. But it's really setup for the next big arc, and Chary's getting really tired of being jerked around by Ella and her crazy friends. (Normally I dislike the "straw
skeptic" who refuses to believe in magic in a world very much full of the paranormal, but at this point I think Chary has decided he will literally die before he accepts any of this "crazy space bitch" stuff, purely out of spite. So it wraps around to fun again.) Recommended. $4.99 each

Star Trek: the Lower Decks #1-4: IDW - Due to a veritable comedy of errors, the first three issues weren't available when my last shipment was sent, despite having come out by then. So I got the first four all at once...almost ended up waiting for the trade. North goes with two issue
arcs, at least for the first four issues, which does nicely emulate the
"single commercial break in the middle" pacing of 30 minute shows. The continuity placement is a little vague, happening after T'Lyn joined the core cast but before the series finale (this is important to the second arc,
because Rutherford's still uncertain whether he should become more
cybernetic, and learns that at least in one respect more computer power wouldn't make him a better person or engineer). It is definitely difficult
to have interquel stories where characters Learn A Lesson, because even if
you point out that a single lesson rarely sticks, dramatically you need to
find a lesson that didn't get learned at a later point in other media (especially lessons learned in the series finale arc). So far, North is managing to find specific angles on characters' ongoing character issues that can be addressed without just copying or rendering redundant something in an episode. Comics tie-ins tend to be "deuterocanonical," needing to be consistent with the canon of the show, but not allowed to do anything the
show would be forced to acknowledge. So far, so good. Less good is the fact that #3 sees the change to the fugly new IDW logo, to the point that even at
a glance the cover felt WRONG. Recommended, $4.99 each.

Expected next time: Probably another skip month for floppies, if not overall. Somehow the MLP: Cadence one-shot was not pulled for me, instead
one of the G5 books was grabbed, so Cadence will be in the next shipment, whenever it is. Assume continuations of everything above except Ultraman x Avengers, and Vampirella will be rebooting at #1. Maybe another Gatchaman one-shot will be in the next batch. I technically have sixteen titles in my pull, but a bunch of them might never put out another issue and are only on
the list out of sheer hope. Will Scout Comics ever resume publication of the titles of theirs I follow? Will there ever be another Orville comic? Or another Arrowsmith series? And that's not even counting the potential demise of the direct market in the first place.


Dave Van Domelen, "That's the thing about laws: They don't mean anything if they're not ENFORCED." - She-Hulk, Fantastic Four #29

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