Also this week...

ALL-NEW ATOM #2 - The DC ongoing series with the weirdest pedigree imaginable - concepts by Grant Morrison, script by Gail Simone, art by John Byrne.  And given that we of the comic book chattering classes have spent years rolling our eyes heavenward at the output of John Byrne, whose work I used to enjoy enormously, it's a genuine pleasure to see him doing good art on a good comic.  Admittedly, I like the lead character, but I'm still not really sold on the Atom concept.  The shrinking hero is one of those concepts that Marvel and DC keep coming back to even though the audiences have never noticeably been thrilled, and even in the hands of a great creative team, the potential is surely rather limited.  But for the moment, this is a fun little book.  B+

CREEPER #1 - Talking of concepts that keep coming round whether or not anybody cares, here's yet another relaunch of the Creeper, in the form of a six-issue miniseries by writer Steve Niles and artist Justiniano.  And it's... you know, okay.  This time, Jack Ryder is a confrontational liberal TV host, pitched somewhere between Jon Stewart and Al Franken, and otherwise it's the usual routine of investigate, meet stock villains, get powers - yes, he's been rebooted by Infinite Crisis - and fight evil.  It's thoroughly adequate, but not in any way exceptional, and I can't for the life of me imagine this leading to a successful Creeper series.  B-

NEW EXCALIBUR #10 - Frank Tieri continues his unenviable task of filling New Excalibur indefinitely without messing up Chris Claremont's plots.  Sensibly enough, his solution is to start a completely new three-parter which has nothing to do with anything that came before.  The original Black Knight is sent forward in time from the fall of Camelot to get help from Excalibur.  All things considered, it's actually better than you might expect - there's a relatively interesting subtext about England's tourist-oriented heritage culture, and you can't deny that a book called New Excalibur has a built-in excuse to do Camelot stories.  Of course, it's still a fill-in when all's said and done, but it does the job perfectly well.  B

There's more from me at If Destroyed, which should get plenty of updates over the next few weeks, because the Edinburgh Festival is underway, and I'm on holiday.  If you're desperate for more Article 10 columns, you can always hunt through the archives on Ninth Art.

Next week, more random slaughter in New X-Men #29; the Magician storyline continues in Ultimate X-Men #73; and Wolverine: Origins #5 completes the title's first arc.  Plus, X-Statix Presents Dead Girl is collected as a trade paperback.

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