Also this week...

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #50 - The big reunion of Peter and Mary Jane, all set to a mildly amusing Dr Doom story.  It hinges on a fairly mammoth coincidence, of course, but you can just about get away with that sort of thing if it's done tongue in cheek.  I have difficulty getting all that worked up about the Peter and Mary Jane relationship since what we've got here is essentially the final stage of a plot designed to hit the reset button on a storyline which was itself intended to hit the reset button to the pre-marriage days.  But now that the decks have been more or less cleared, hopefully things can move forward.  B+

AVENGERS #64 - The Falcon has woken up one morning and apparently he's now much more powerful.  Yeah, whatever.  Perfectly passable superhero material, but I still don't see what's supposed to be out of the ordinary about Geoff Johns.  It's alright.  B

CEREBUS #287 - Well, we at least get an acknowledgement that Sim has been deliberately testing his audience's patience with those endless bloody screeds.  However, I'm not entirely convinced by his point - we weren't reading them, not just because they were spectacularly boring, but because wading through the first three or four we'd already got the point, which was a bizarre attempt to reinterpret the Old Testament in misogynist terms.  Meanwhile, the art races through the remainder of the life of Woody Allen.  Cerebus remains mired in "completists only" territory.  C

DAREDEVIL #44 - Well, we're back to Matt Murdock in long conversational scenes, and so the traditionalists can start grumbling again.  But they're wrong, because this is Bendis, and I would happily buy a comic by Bendis featuring two pensioners discussing rheumatism in a queue at the Co-op, since his dialogue really is that good.  Fabulous stuff, and more proof of why this is one of the best books in Marvel's line at the moment.  A-

ELEKTRA #20 - Given that the solicitations make it blindingly obvious that this is all being swept aside at the end of the run, it's increasingly hard to get involved.  Nonetheless, Rucka is continuing to do solid work with the character; the question mark is over the art.  In parts, Carlos Meglia's work appeals to me, but it's a ridiculously jarring shift from earlier issues of the series.  The book now looks like a particularly exaggerated cartoon, and that's totally at odds with the story Rucka is trying to do.  Drake now looks positively deformed for most of the story, and Locke, who was previously merely in a wheelchair, seems to have joined the Steven Hawkings Impersonation League.  I can see this art working for some stories, and there are moments when I quite like it here, but on the whole it's detracting from the writing.  B-

GLOBAL FREQUENCY #5 - Jon J Muth is on art this time round, and that's your recommendation right there.  As for this month's concept, this is Ellis trying to square magic as a possible form of mental suggestion while still leaving the door open.  It's one of the stronger ideas we've seen in the story so far, although this issue still won't answer the complaints that the series is lacking when it comes to characterisation and so forth.  Ultimately, the answer to those complaints is that the book isn't trying to do any of those things, but there's some validity to the complaints that it's become a lopsided as a result.  B+

PETER PARKER, SPIDER-MAN #53 - Ah, Zeb Wells again.  Is Paul Jenkins still on this book?  [Checks solicitations.]  No, apparently not.  Whatever happened to that proposed relaunch of one of the Spider-Man books with Kevin Smith, anyway?  Is that still happening?  Come to think of it, are we ever going to see Daredevil: Target #2, and if not, why did they bother shipping issue #1?  I mean, it's been four months since the last issue was solicited, and there comes a point when you're just taking the piss.  Hint: If the series doesn't exist, don't sell chapter one.  Basic tips for professional publishers who don't want to look like tits - collect the series.  Anyhow, this is a Boomerang story, and Wells does a good job of building up this utterly ludicrous minor villain before having Spider-Man beat the crap out of him at the end.  Entertaining enough, and Machael O'Hare seems a more sympathetic choice of artist than Herrera.  B

VERTIGO X ANNIVERSARY PREVIEW - A whole load of plugs for Vertigo, the main selling point being a short Shade story by Peter Milligan and Michael Allred from X-Statix.  Short meaning six pages, but it's a nice enough reminder of one of the best pre-Vertigo titles - and it's insane that the book hasn't been put into TPB format before now, because it's far and away some of Milligan and Bachalo's best work.  Elsewhere, it's a collection of preview pages and interviews, with the fabulous news that there's an ongoing Human Target series by Milligan in the works.  Say, any plans to reprint that hardback graphic novel at a price that reasonable people would pay?  B+

WILDCATS VERSION 3.0 #7 - The quality gap between this and Casey's Uncanny X-Men is just amazing.  While early issues annoyed me with a somewhat loose grasp of the corporate world, things seem to be coming together nicely now.  Plenty of interesting ideas in here, and increasing doubt being shown about whether the heroes are on the right line at all.  I could live without the token BDSM henchmen, which is a vastly overused concept, but never mind.  By the way, is there any reason why this book is still called WildCATS aside from historical curiosity?  B+

There's another Article 10 column at Ninth Art on Monday.

The UK's National Comics Awards are now taking online votes.  You may wish to consider visiting their website and placing a vote in the category of best comics website.  I would not dream of trying to influence your vote, but I note that this site and Ninth Art are both eligible.

It occurs to me that I've never mentioned my Livejournal here before, so here you go.  Features a colour photograph of me, for anyone who found the Ninth Art photo frustratingly monochrome.

Next week, Exiles begins a Weapon X story, X-Treme X-Men continues the "Schism" arc, and X-Men: Ronin tries to rekindle my negligible interest in the Mangaverse line.  Uncanny X-Men is on the solicitations for next week as well, but doesn't seem to have made it to the shipping list.

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