Also this week:

DAREDEVIL: FATHER #1 - The huge barrel chest.  The awkward combination of graceful gymnastics and excess muscle.  And two pointy things on his forehead.  Yes, it's the Tick.  Actually, most of the art is wonderful in this book (even if it is a little overreliant on splash pages at the outset).  But the strangely distorted Daredevil doesn't work in the context of Quesada's style.  Reasonably interesting opening chapter, though.  B+

4 #5 - Heading into its second storyline, the book quietly shoves the "no money" idea to the sidelines and packs the family off on a camping trip.  Fortunately, this shows what I'd suspected all along - the only thing wrong with this book is the awful, editorially-imposed premise, and if they dump it, this could be a really good comic.  It's already beautiful, and by sidestepping the dumb central idea for an issue, this gives us a sense of what the book could be like if only they'd unburden it.  A

LOVE FIGHTS #9 - Crikey, this is bizarre.  Instead of the usual heart, the front cover has a hero creaking under the weight of a giant copyright warning, which is a pretty good indication of where we're going.  The romance gets put on hold as we start to find out a bit more about the nature of superheroes in Love Fight's world, and it's all rather weird.  After playing them fairly straight up till this point, the floor drops out from beneath us as we discover that the heroes only fight villains from their own publisher unless it's an officially sanctioned crossover, and that the hapless superheroes are the only people in the world who don't remember the Crisis.  Meanwhile, evil publishers are trying to bring back Golden and Silver Age characters from a pocket universe in order to "rake in a fortune from the nostalgia crowd."  (I'm looking at you, Hal Jordan.)  Completely mental, closer to Grant Morrison's metatextual extravaganzas than anything I'd expect from Andi Watson, and of course almost totally impenetrable to anyone without a working knowledge of superhero comics.  But incredible.  A+

Last week's Article 10 is still up at Ninth Art.

Next week, after all the hype, Reload finally begins.  Uncanny X-Men #444 sees Chris Claremont and Alan Davis reunited.  Solicitations suggest that Claremont is still firmly in his rut, but at least it should be pretty.  Exiles #46 is the first issue with new writer Tony Bedard, fresh off the refugee boat from CrossGen.  Alpha Flight continues its opening arc, though Marvel don't seem to be classing it as an X-book any more.

There's also the Official Handbook for the X-Men, which sounds like it's going to be enormously cramped, but you never know.  And if you're a masochist, there's the trade paperback of Uncanny X-Men's "She Lies With Angels", in which Chuck Austen gives Romeo & Juliet an undeserved kicking.

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