[REVIEW] Dave's TF Comic/Book Capsules

                    Dave's Unspoilt Capsules and Awards
         The Week's Picks and Pans, plus Awards of Dubious Merit

Standard Disclaimers: Please set appropriate followups.  Recommendation does
not factor in price.  Not all books will have arrived in your area this week.
Very busy week, not getting much sleep.  Rants, Capsules can be found on my 
             homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants 

Capsules:
     The regular Capsule reviews of books I actually buy.  If I get a book
late due to distributor foulups or whatever, I'll put it in the Missing
section.  

     Transformers Armada Cine-Manga "First Encounter" and "The Mystery of the
Missing Mini-Cons": Tokyopop - In format, these are cel books, using stills
from the cartoon and comicbook-style speech bubbles to tell the story.  The
stills are cropped into weird "tech" shapes and set against two-page splashes
that are background paintings from the cartoon.  The panels are all about the
same size, and the flow from panel to panel is...inconsistent.  I mean, it's
not like they just took a frame ever few seconds, the choices themselves are
fairly good.  But it's not always clear, even for someone who has seen the
story told three or four ways already, what's going on.  However, the biggest
flaw is far more serious than some iffy storytelling.  Each of these books
adapts two episodes...of three-episode arcs.  "First Encounter" covers the
first two eps of Armada, stopping before the big fight in ep 3.  "The Mystery
of the Missing Mini-Cons" is another retelling of the Search for the Star
Sabre, but only adapts Ruin and Prehistory, leaving out the actual formation
of the Star Saber.  Gaaaah.  Plus, sadly, it preserves the really bad
dialogue of the episodes (like the "story so far" in ep 2 that has the kids
intuiting the entire history of the Mini-Cons from no evidence at all).  At
least the misnaming doesn't seem to be present, but I can't recall if these
eps had misnames.  Oh, one good thing, the Atlantean name for the Mini-Cons,
"Olyhalcons," is spelled out.  Anyway, as something for a fan who knows the
stories already, they're alright.  But don't get them and expect to get the
end of either story.  Oh, and I probably should mention that these are digest
sized (5" wide, 7.5" tall), with Optimus Prime on the cover of "First
Encounter" and Megatron on the cover of the other one.  Very mildly
recommended.  $7.99
[snip]
     Transformers vs GIJoe #3 (of 6): Dreamwave - Y'know, this story might be
pretty good if I could see anything?  I can't even blame this on the usual
Dreamwave coloring job, since it's just inked to death.  Deep black shadows
concealing anything of interest...I didn't even realize Stormshadow had an
exposed face until several pages in.  Plus, Jae Lee seems to be a bit
obsessed with using photoref (or outright photocopying) on all the vehicles,
to the point where there's no life to them.  And when you're doing living
machines, you NEED to give them life visually.  Neutral.  $2.95  (Yes, I *am*
rating this below the half-made adaptations of not-very-good Armada eps.)
[snip]
     Transformers: City of Fear TPB: Titan Books - Well, I think this is the
first UK Transformers reprint book where the timeline text piece at the start
is totally divorced from the stories.  In fact, it goes back and picks up
several pieces skipped over in the timeline of previous collections, such as
City of Fear and Kup's Story.  I do wish they'd put issue numbers in with the
creator credits on each story, so it wouldn't be a puzzle to figure out which
story was from what issue.  Good pieces, though.  Recommended.
$19.95/#14.99UK  (Oh, side note, there's a sticker on the back promoting "NEW
Transformers Armada DVD & Video", but I'm not sure if that refers to a
U.S. or U.K. release.)
[snip]
Awards: [with much snip]

"Allergic To Rectangles" Award to Transformers Armada Cine-Manga

"The Heart, Lungs And Spleen Of Darkness" Award to Transformers vs GIJoe
     #3 (of 6)

"Autobot, Decepticon...I'm The One With The Photon Rifle" Award to 
     Transformers: City of Fear TPB


     Dave Van Domelen, "...and the leprechauns feast on your bones..." - Dork
Tower #25