Also among this week's comics...

BLACK PANTHER #58 - The second half of J Torres and Ryan Bodenheim's fill-in story makes the Hamlet parallels rather more obvious (and uses Hamlet itself as the play-within-a-play, giving Ross an opportunity to explain the reference).  I'm not convinced about the inconclusive ending, and Bodenheim seems to be rushing a bit this time round.  B-

GRAND GESTURES - This is a one-shot by Robert Ullman, published by Alternative Comics.  Comedy drama, with two stories about the same three characters.  The lead is about their disparate, but equally unsuccessful, love lives; the back-up is a vignette about going to see a film.  Observational stuff, then, but entertainingly done.  Ullman overshoots the mark a bit with a scene unfortunately reminiscent of a Dawson's Creek remix of Trainspotting's "you're a schoogirl?" scene, but overall, pretty good.  B+

JLA #80 - The beginning of a new storyline, and at long last I'm starting to see some of the strengths I was hoping for in the Joe Kelly run.  Now that he's got a cast of characters who are more or less under his control, characterisation is moving to the forefront, and that's always a good thing.  Guest artist Duncan Rouleau does not immediately spring to mind as a JLA artist, and it looks like he agrees - he tones down his normal style drastically for this issue.  It still looks alright, mind you.  B+

KILLER PRINCESSES #3 - Jeez, how late is this?  Let's see, I reviewed issue #1 back in...  (checks)  Christ almighty!  December 2001!  Sixteen months ago!  No wonder I couldn't remember the plot.  It probably won't surprise you to hear that the erratic, nay glacial, scheduling of this series has not helped the pacing enormously.  It's still quite fun, and the triumph of the Princesses' credo of total idiocy is a nice twist for the villain.  But... you know, it's really, really late.  B

PARADIGM #8 - Have you ever been reading a comic and suddenly been struck by the realisation that you don't enjoy it in the slightest, and are only reading it because it feels like it ought to be good for you?  Quite honestly, I have no clue what's going on in this book or why (partly because it's deliberately cryptic, partly because the visual storytelling sometimes isn't the best).  If anyone reading this actually understands Paradigm and could give me some idea of what the hell it's about, do let me know.  Because I'm starting to feel like it's the literary equivalent of a particularly indigestible third bowl of All Bran.  Surely the point of this sort of fiction is to communicate ideas, not obfuscate them.  There is undoubtedly a plan in here somewhere, but is there a story?  C

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

UK National Comics Awards, blah blah blah, website, blah blah blah, X-Axis and Ninth Art, etc.  You know the drill by now.

If you're in the UK, you will doubtless be thrilled to learn that the much-derided TV version of Birds of Prey debuts on Tuesday at 9pm.  Something tells me the bidding war was less than intense - it's on Cartoon Network Xtreme. 

Next week, yet more Wolverine spin-offs!  Fortunately, these ones don't sound so bad.  Wolverine/Doop is basically just a fill-in issue of X-Statix.  Wolverine: Snikt! is a Tsunami book, by Tsutomu Nihei, which feels a touch superfluous but at least ought to be a different approach to the character.  Elsewhere in the line, new penciller Clayton Henry debuts in Exiles #26.  And more attempts to cash in on the film - the sequel to God Loves Man Kills begins in X-Treme X-Men #25, while Uncanny X-Men gives us a 25c issue.

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