Also this week...

DAREDEVIL #93 - What a strange issue.  This is billed as the final part of "The Devil Takes A Ride", but it's really more of an epilogue.  Matt Murdock finally returns to New York and, with the help of some plot contrivances, finally manages to restore his secret identity to merely "widely suspected" and not "publicly known."  And then the wife comes back, and Foggy Nelson comes back, and it's like we're racing at breakneck speed to get this stuff out of the way.  It's so obviously an issue of the writer hammering the reset button for all he's worth that perhaps it's best to just get it out of the way, but it still comes across as terribly rushed and contrived.  This, by the way, shall be the fate of many of Marvel's more recent "shocking" developments - since they leave the ongoing series with nowhere to go, they just have to be undone by hook or by crook.  If they haven't done the same story with Spider-Man by 2009, I'll be very surprised.  At least Brubaker has now got the book back to a workable status quo, however awkwardly, and perhaps we can finally, finally move on from "Let's tear Daredevil's life apart - it worked for Frank Miller."  This has been one of the better efforts in that vein, mind you, but surely there are other avenues to explore with this character.  B- 

JACK OF FABLES #7 - Here's something you don't see often.  This was meant to be the second half of the Snow Queen story, but, er, it's not finished yet.  So instead of waiting until it's ready, they've just brought forward the next arc, "Viva Las Vegas", and begun it early.  The Snow Queen story will be tied up in issue #10 and, as an opening caption shrugs, "It'll be more suspenseful that way.  And anyway, they'll fix it in the trade."  DC did something similar with Batman recently, and perhaps this is going to be their new approach to books with unreliable schedules.  It actually works out surprisingly well, although I'm sure that's more of a happy accident with this particular book.  "Viva Las Vegas" finally gets Jack and some of his supporting cast out into the real world and, I think, points to a better direction for this title.  We've already got Fables doing an all-Fable community; Jack of Fables can get more of an identity by going for a different setting.  This is a fun little book, despite the curious scheduling decisions.  A-

ULTIMATE CIVIL WAR SPIDER-HAM FEATURING WOLVERHAM #1 - I don't generally review books that I read in the store, but then you don't generally see books so devoid of content that I can finish them in the store.  There's a token and moderately promising set-up sequence, and then... it's a poster book.  A poster book of various Marvel characters as pigs.  With endless puns on the word ham.  Repeat until funny.  Except it never is.  It's another in the recent string of jaw-dropping artefacts that make you wonder just how badly off-centre Marvel's quality control has become, and whether anyone in editorial is actually devoting critical thought to the efforts of favoured creators.  I mean, this is horrible - it's not even "not funny" in the way that Christmas cracker jokes aren't funny.  It's not funny in the way that chairs and rocks aren't funny.  Absolutely ungodly dreadful, and in all seriousness, something is terribly wrong when comics this bad are making the shelves.  D

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

Next week sees the launch of Dark Tower #1, which pretty much has to sell in mind-quaking quantities and be greeted as an instant classic if it's going to live up to the extraordinary amount of hype.  Personally, though, I'm not remotely interested in the book, so I won't be reading it.  Still, with my industry-watcher hat on, I'll be intrigued to see how it goes down.

Meanwhile, in the quiet backwater of the X-books, X-Men: Phoenix - Warsong finally wraps up, two weeks late.  It's been a dire series so far, and I'm not holding my breath for a last minute reversal.  Also running late, X-Men Annual #1 (yes, even the annuals are renumbering from #1) checks in on Aurora and Northstar.  Plus, "Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire" continues in Uncanny X-Men #483, while X-23's back story continues in X-23: Target X #3.

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