Also this week...

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #532 - Uh-oh.  This is a Civil War crossover, and the premise of the story was spelt out quite clearly in Civil War #1 - heroes have to reveal their identities to the US government.  Not the public, the government.  So here's J Michael Straczynski with one of the leading tie-in storylines, and what do we have?  A story with Spider-Man angsting about having to reveal his identity to the public.  So unless there's a very odd piece of misdirection going on here, it looks alarming as though this crossover is so poorly co-ordinated that the creators of Amazing Spider-Man don't even understand the basic concept of the plot.  And if they can't even get everyone on the same page for the fundamentals, they're screwed.  C

HERO SQUARED #1 - Perhaps surprisingly, an ongoing title following from the Hero Squared miniseries, which didn't exactly sell in enormous numbers.  Still, it's a neat little premise: Captain Valor comes to Earth after his own parallel world is destroyed, pursued by his archenemy (and ex-girlfriend).  Much to his annoyance, the local version of Captain Valor turns out to be a guy called Milo who didn't show up for his origin story because he was too lazy.  Obviously the idea of parallel versions of the same character isn't original, but Giffen and DeMatteis play it with wit, and it more or less works as a straight superhero book too.  Not quite in the league of some of their earlier work, but still great fun.  B+

STORM #4 - The idea of marrying the Black Panther and Storm may be ludicrous, but Eric Jerome Dickey and David Yardin are continuing to do solid work on this miniseries, which is really far better than the whole stunt merits.  It's not desperately original - boy meets girl, bigots chase boy, everyone fights bigots - but Dickey does write convincingly human characters and bring a bit of life to this utterly contrived relationship.  Of course, he can get away with it because he's writing them as two people who've only just met, and doesn't have to convince us that, honestly, they've been pining for the intervening decade.  But taken purely on its own merits, I've got to say this is working.  B+

Monday's Ninth Art column is my contribution to the "Top Nine" feature, and there's more from me at If Destroyed.

Next week, New X-Men #27 completes the current arc, although it looks more like it's just the middle act of a year-long storyline.  And X-Men: The End finally does just that, with Book 3, issue #6.

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