Also this week:

IRON MAN #6 - The Ellis/Granov arc finally lumbers to a conclusion, completing the monthly arc that began in November 2004.  If the remit here was to reinvigorate the Iron Man character then the results are decidedly mixed.  Ellis has some interesting ideas for the direction of the character, and if we've seen all this futurism stuff hammered to death on his various websites, that doesn't alter the fact that it's still appropriate subject matter for the character.  On the other hand, what we end up with is a story which introduces new ideas that, in theory, ought to work.  In practice, they certainly don't work here, in a six-issue arc that would have been sluggish even it had come out on time, and where the actual plot seems little more than a perfunctory obligation.  Should have been much, much better than it actually was.  C

NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI - In which Brian Bendis retcons some of Marvel's leading heroes into an Illuminati group, but then realises that he can't get away with claiming that they've been running anything, and decides that they've just sort of been exchanging information instead.  It's a somewhat interesting idea but never really holds together; this group needed to be much more firmly established if their break-up over the Superhuman Registration Act was going to seem dramatically meaningful.  This special tries to do all that work retroactively, but it's simply not a possible task.  Incidentally, somewhere along the line it seems that the Hulk has started killing people all over the place, which is a total change of policy from the establish (albeit rather unlikely) position.  It's only a year or so back that Bruce Jones was doing a very lengthy story based on the idea that it was a shocking novelty for the Hulk to have killed even one small child, so the casual throwaway news that he's now knocking off 26 civilians in a single rampage just doesn't hold up.  If you're going to make radical changes like that, Incredible Hulk might have been a good place to start.  Four issue of the Hulk actually destroying and killing things, for example, rather than four issues of Daniel Way killing time.  Anyhow... a nice idea in theory, I suppose, but it's absurd to skip straight to the break-up without ever properly establishing the group in the first place.  B-

QUEEN & COUNTRY #29 - Oh look, this is back.  I've got the second novel, Private Wars, sitting in my "to read" pile so I'm delighted to see that this arc takes place before the book.  On the other hand, they're taking it for granted that everyone's read the first novel, A Gentleman's Game.  And since that book changed the whole status quo of the series, a straightforward recap on the inside front cover might have been a good idea.  Anyhow, Tara is traumatised after the novel, but the boss is trying to drag her back to work so that he can avoid being saddled with her likely replacement.  It's a great character piece and the internal politics come across wonderfully, but I have my doubts about how accessible this will be for readers who didn't pick up the novel.  A

X-MEN: DEADLY GENESIS #5 - Apparently public transport is really great in the Marvel Universe UK, because Professor X can get from Wales to the northwest of Scotland almost instantly.  That's a couple of days fast, if you ask me.  Anyway, Ed Brubaker continues the slow build on his enormous retcon, and by this point he's pretty much sold me on it.  There's actually something quaintly reassuring about an X-Men book that's bothering to try and fit into the team's mythos.  In many ways this is the sort of story they'd have done ten years ago, only with a slightly more modern style.  I suspect I may be in a minority in liking this book, since a lot of people won't care about this sort of messing around with history, and many of the people who do care will hate the actual idea.  But I'm still getting a kick out of it.  B+

X-STATIX PRESENTS DEAD GIRL #3 - This is really more of a Dr Strange series than a Dead Girl book, but that's nothing to complain about.  Obviously Milligan's warped and rather abstract sense of humour is never going to appeal to everyone, but for those of us who do enjoy it, he's on form here.  It's completely ridiculous, and the Anarchist/Miss America subplot is wonderfully nonsensical, but Milligan's absurdity is much cleverer than most people's.  Up there with the better X-Statix stories.  A

Last week's Article 10 is still up at Ninth Art, and there's more from me at If Destroyed.

Next week, it's Chris Claremont week, with both X-Men: The End vol 3 #4 and New Excalibur #6 coming out.  X-Men Unlimited #14 features two Chris Claremont stories.  And X-Men: Apocalypse vs Dracula reaches issue #3.  There's also a seventh volume of Essential X-Men, taking us all the way up to the Fall of the Mutants, and a seventh trade paperback for Ultimate X-Men with the final Vaughan/Immonen arc.

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