Also this week:

FANTASTIC FOUR: HOUSE OF M #1 - Slightly misnamed, really, because the House of M doesn't have a Fantastic Four, and (with one obvious exception) the characters don't even appear in this book.  Instead, it's Dr Doom as puppet ruler of Latveria, leading his own "heroic" team.  Nitpickers might point out that Dr Doom's actually supposed to be stranded in another dimension at the moment, begging the question of how he can be in House of M at all, but I'll let that slide.  It's basically the same set up as most of the House of M stories - having fulfilled Magneto's dreams first and foremost, the House of M reality is trying to accommodate Doom as best it can within that.  Of course, since the best it has to offer him is "puppet ruler", he's not going to put up with that for long.  It's a nice little Dr Doom story, and if the identity of the It is blindingly obvious, it still makes for an interesting relationship with Doom.  Pretty good.  A-

IRON MAN: HOUSE OF M #1 - In which Iron Man simultaneously gets to run a company and appear in something called Sapien Death Match, where humans in robot suits fight one another for public entertainment.  In fairness, this turns out to be not quite as silly as it sounds, since by all appearances the name is just hype - they're not really death matches.  It does come across as an awkward set up, though, with the armour stuff never really feeling like an organic part of Stark's fantasy world.  You get the feeling it's been bolted on partly because it's meant to be an Iron Man story, and partly because it's got Pat Lee on art.  (As you'd expect, he's great on the robots, not so good on the rest.)  The relationship between Tony and his father is well done, though, and it's the sort of story that you can't do in the mainstream universe due to Tony's dad being inconveniently deceased.  Mixed, but certainly not without interest.  B

OCEAN #6 - Urk.  The much-delayed Ocean started back in October 2004, and had a languid pace at the best of times.  Still, there were some interesting ideas in there, and it was more or less succeeding in what it set out to do.  This double-sized final issue, though, is a mess.  The first half is a great big fight scene, done well enough, but not really what you buy a book like Ocean for.  The second half is meant to be the huge impressive climax.  I'd like to tell you whether it worked or not, but unfortunately I haven't got the faintest clue what's meant to be happening.  It's genuinely incomprehensible, and while it's clear enough that the good guys win, I am left with absolutely no idea how or why.  I suppose there might have been a line of dialogue six months that shed some light on it, but god knows nothing here inspires me to go back and re-read the earlier issues to check.  Awful.  D+

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

Next week, Ultimate X-Men #61 begins the new "Magnetic North" story arc; and X-Men: The End reaches the penultimate issue of book two.  Otherwise, it's an oddball selection.  The Mutopia X miniseries makes its debut, and strangely enough, it's the only House of M book out next week.  Weapon X: Days of Future Now #1 begins a five-issue miniseries tying up all those storylines which were left dangling when Weapon X was axed mid-story.  And hell freezes over as NYX #6 hits the shelves - originally solicited for 28 July 2004.

If you're collecting the trades, Ultimate X-Men volume 11 collects "The Most Dangerous Game", and X-Men collects "Golgotha", the first Peter Milligan arc.

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