Also this week...

ONSLAUGHT REBORN #1 - Well, it's what you'd expect, really.  Onslaught returns thanks to M-Day, the all-purpose event that does everything.  He immediately sets out after Franklin Richards again, fights the Fantastic Four, and chases him to Counter-Earth.  And that's pretty much a thorough synopsis of the whole issue.  Rob Liefeld does what we've come to expect from him, while writer Jeph Loeb doesn't so much phone it in as scribble it on the back of a stamp and staple it to a passing carrier pigeon.  Utterly awful, but at the same time, it's no worse than you'd expect.  Quality is irrelevant to Rob Liefeld comics, in the same way that it's irrelevant to Crazy Frog ringtones.  If for some reason you actually want this comic, it will provide you with whatever you were after.  I suppose you've got to give it that.  D

WHISPER #1 - Steven Grant wrote a comic called Whisper back in the 1980s, but this time he's apparently written something completely different with the same name. In an interesting format choice, Boom! Studios have opted for a one-shot which could just as easily be a first issue, making it a sort of pilot comic.  Basically, it's a crime book, and this is the origin of the lead character.  Actually explaining the plot in any more detail than that is terribly difficult without wrecking it (which, in this case, I really wouldn't want to do), but suffice to say that the set-up leads to a tough action heroine drawn into this world rather against her will - you know, that sort of character.  It's decent enough, with some interesting storytelling choices, but ultimately it doesn't leave me wanting to see more of the lead character, which was presumably part of the idea.  B-

There's more from me at If Destroyed, and if you're desperate for more Article 10 columns, you can always hunt through the archives on Ninth Art.

Next week is another quiet one.  New Excalibur #14 has more of Frank Tieri's Juggernaut storyline, while "Fall and Rise of the Shi'ar Empire" continues its stately progress in Uncanny X-Men #481.

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