To be honest, this week I do have the time to review other comics in full.  But frankly, nothing out this week was remotely interesting.  So, just for completeness...

MARVEL TEAM-UP #6 - Notionally the end of the first storyline, although in fact only one of the numerous storylines really comes to an end here.  Frankly, this book isn't working, and it's the central team-up gimmick that's killing it.  Kirkman seems to have some story he wants to tell about his villains, and because he's trying to keep it going no matter who the nominal lead characters are, the heroes end up being pretty much interchangeable.  What we've got here is a fairly straightforward superhero story badly mangled by the need to fit a cast of thousands into a protagonist role that really only needs one character.  In theory this issue is Captain America and the Black Widow, but they add nothing to the story which the existing characters weren't already doing, and since those characters are still around, it all comes across as a chaotic mess.  Marvel Team-Up was always a contrived idea, and with the title characters increasing seeming like two characters picked at random from that issue's football team of guest stars, it's becoming clear that Kirkman is not winning his battle to fulfil the gimmick and tell a story at the same time.  C+ 

ULTIMATE IRON MAN #1 - Orson Scott Card makes his comics debut with a story straight out of the Bill Jemas school of origins - begin at the beginning, and then just to be on the safe side, go about ten years further back than that.  Iron Man doesn't appear in this issue, due to not having been born yet.  It's an issue about his father's experiments with some kind of bacterial armour.  Card just about sells the concept, although I don't understand why you couldn't avoid the skin-eating problem simply by wearing it on clothes.  Meanwhile, pregnant Maria gets infected with a virus from an experimental monkey, which apparently means that little Tony is going to have lots of extra brain and will be really clever.  I'm reminded of a lot of J Michael Straczynski's recent work; it's technically sound, straw man villains notwithstanding, but it seems to miss the point of the character by several miles.  Iron Man is the human who brings himself up to the level of the superhumans through the power of engineering; I don't for the life of me see what superhuman brainpower adds thematically.  Perfectly well executed, but the concept seems more than a little misguided.  B

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

Next week, X-Men: Age of Apocalypse continues - yes, they're shipping three issues in two weeks.  Nothing like a bit of overkill, is there?  Akira Yoshida's Wolverine: Soultaker miniseries also starts next week, giving him a total of five comics shipped in a fortnight.  X-Men: The End returns for its second volume, Gambit continues "Voodoo Economics", and District X reaches the penultimate chapter of "Underground."  There's also a trade paperback of the first six issues of Gambit.

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