Also this week...

IRON MAN: HYPERVELOCITY #1 - How old fashioned, it's a story where Iron Man isn't a fascist warmonger.  It's been a while since we had one of those.  In theory Iron Man ought to be a great fit for Adam Warren, since there's an obvious parallel with all those armour-suited manga characters he loves so much.  In practice, you get the impression that Warren hasn't actually read Iron Man in a good few years and is doing his version of something that would have been cool a decade ago.  The idea of Iron Man armour turning out to be an empty suit - or, if that's what he's teasing, the possibility of the armour itself being alive - are both ideas that have been done heavily in recent years, and while there are some great little action sequences here, ultimately Warren doesn't seem to be bringing much in the way of new ideas.  Quite fun, but not original.  B

UNCANNY X-MEN #482 - Meanwhile, over in Ed Brubaker's title, the Shi'ar Empire storyline reaches part 8 of 12.  This seems as good a place as any to note that the adverts are back to normal quantities, but in their place we have a whopping great card insert which takes some ingenuity to get rid of without removing the staples.  Here's how to do it: the spine provides a convenient crease, so tear the thing carefully along the crease.  Then you should be able to yank the remaining card off the staples without doing any particular damage, and your reading experience will be all the better for it.  (But do be careful, because if you screw it up, you end up with something like my copy of newuniversal #2, which is not a happy-looking object.)  Having filled up a paragraph with this useful information, I feel content to simply observe that issue #482 is about the same standard as the other Brubaker/Tan issues, although the art has some awkward moments; there's some fairly obvious backpedalling about That Bloody Sword as Korvus starts trying to explain how he can lift such a thing, while the art tries to find angles where it looks slightly less idiotic (with mixed success); and the pace seems to be tightening as we move into the final act, albeit that with the benefit of hindsight, it doesn't feel like the story has progressed as much as it should have in eight issues.  Fine, though.  B

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, Frank Tieri finishes his fill-in arc on New Excalibur, while New X-Men is still focussing on X-23, and Wolverine: Origins introduces Wolverine's son.

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