Also this week:

EXILES #73 - More of the New Universe, and the apparent death of a major character - although I'm sufficiently cynical these days that I'll wait until the end of the storyline before deciding whether to buy into it or not.  It's certainly an odd way to kill off one of the heroes - drawn out, and without any big heroic struggle.  Meanwhile, the New Universe characters continue their surprisingly enjoyable retro schtick, as Nightmask joins the list of guest stars.  I dread to think what this storyline must be like for people who don't remember the New Universe from the first time around, since the nostalgia is 90% of the appeal.  But there were some perfectly good characters in that imprint, despite its monumental failure, and there's something to be said for the view that it's "superpowers without the spandex" approach was simply ahead of its time rather than misconceived.  Well, to some extent, anyway.  B+

WOLVERINE #36 - The first post-House of M issue, and Wolverine's remembered his entire life.  I could have sworn we already did this whole storyline back in the early nineties in the Larry Hama run when Wolverine had all his mental blocks removed, but apparently not.  Anyway, Daniel Way doesn't quite hit the mark with this first part of the storyline.  It's an issue of Wolverine tearing around Tokyo on some unspecified mission, apparently to confront the Silver Samurai for some reason or other.  But we've just come off a year of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr doing demented action stories, and with that fresh in the mind, this story seems positively anaemic by comparison.  Really, it doesn't take us any further than to confirm that, yes, we're doing the story that was clearly advertised in the solicitations.  Would have made a good opening five pages.  C+

X-MEN #178 - And yet more Decimation, as the X-Men fight Sentinels for a second consecutive issue.  There are obvious scheduling problems with this storyline, since for the purposes of this issue, the nature of the Sentinels and the fact that they've come to guard the Mansion is a big revelation.  But other comics have been explaining it all, as part of the basic set-up, for a couple of weeks.  So really, it's no revelation at all.  If they were going to spend this long on the arrival of the Sentinels, then they really needed to do a full-scale crossover.  More interesting is the cliffhanger with Iceman getting his powers back already - I assume the idea here is that he never really lost them to start with, and Milligan is doing dramatic irony based around two issues of Lorna insisting that her power loss might just be a psychological block.  It's a cute swerve, but not very clearly explained, and runs the risk of making readers think that the Decimation concept is being backtracked already, within a month.  Once again, I suspect my liking of Milligan's sense of humour means that I'll enjoy this much, much more than most readers.  B

X-MEN & POWER PACK #2 - And finally, off in continuity limbo somewhere, the Beast meets Power Pack in a story where we all learn how important science is.  Yes, it's one of those stories where a hero defeats a villain by remembering some high school science and trusting that, for a change, a supervillain might be subject to Newtonian physics.  But cynicism aside, it's a fun little story clearly aimed at younger readers, and perfectly solid within that remit.  And Gurihiru's artwork is indeed lovely.  B

There's a new Article 10... well, already up at Ninth Art.  And more from me at If Destroyed. 

Next week, New Excalibur #2 continues Decimation, although one suspects it does so in the loosest possible way.  X-Men Unlimited #12 has two Wolverine stories, because heaven knows there aren't nearly enough of them.  Sentinel #2 continues the comeback miniseries.  The Colossus miniseries reaches issue #4 of 5.  And heaven only knows what's up with X-Factor #1, which was rescheduled for 7 December but isn't actually on the shipping list.

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