Also this week:

AVENGERS #503 - Yeah, well.  This is a bizarrely misjudged storyline.  Obviously it's a deck clearing exercise, which is fair enough, but given that Brian Bendis is normally so reliably good, it's astonishing to see him producing something as incoherent as this.  Yes, I know the first three issues are deliberately an incoherent mess, but how is that an excuse?  "Yeah, the story sucked, but that was intentional."  Forgive me for not caring.  What we've got here is three issues of fanfic-level plotting (and then Ultron shows up! and then this happens! and then that happens! and then every! Avenger! ever! shows! up!), following by a length exposition about why it happened, none of which is remotely foreshadowed in the previous issues.  This issue pulls it back slightly by finally introducing something vaguely recognisable as human emotion, but the storyline as a whole is a complete mess.  Everyone's got to write a clunker some time, I guess.  D+

AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES #1 - On the other hand, this is surprisingly decent.  It's basically a recap of the early days of the Avengers, with most of the actual stories brushes aside in favour of filling out what happened between scenes, and giving it all a bit more dramatic shape.  This sort of thing frequently descends into a nostalgia fest, but Casey plays it straight and does well with it - I love the idea of the dumb Hulk flying into a tantrum in embarrassment after being asked to sign his name.  ("So... I gotta write... my name?")  Scott Kolins does some of his best artwork here - I think this is the first time his style has really clicked for me.  Good stuff.  A

JLA: CLASSIFIED #1 - Grant Morrison back on the Justice League, for a storyline where the League don't actually appear.  I wasn't a big fan of Grant's JLA, which was all big ideas with little humanity, and had some frequently awful art.  This one gets off to the same sort of start, but it's full of energy, and it's got much better art thanks to Ed McGuinness.  And then Batman turns up, to do the story Grant always seemed to want to do - Batman saves the world, without any of those other people getting in his way.  That's where it falls into place.  Nice.  A-

THE QUESTION #1 - Erm.  Not sure about this at all.  Lots of strange dream-like stuff about being in touch with the city, and people fighting on metaphorical planes.  And some truly, utterly dreadful dialogue that reads like the sort of thing Chris Morris used to turn out.  ("Oh paint chip peeling over bare schizophrenic light bulb.  Oh doomed crack baby suckling cola poison death nipple."  Welcome, welcome in Jam.)  To be honest, this is the sort of book where I hesitate to give it a bad review because I can't shake the feeling that there's something I must be missing.  It's either extremely clever or complete gibberish.  I'm going to go with my gut.  C-

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art.

Next week, District X #7, starting the second arc; Emma Frost #17, which seems to be the penultimate issue; Nightcrawler #2 finally slinks out; and X-Men: The End #5 brings us five eighteenths of the way through the storyline - will the set-up finally be finished?

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