Also this week...

ALL-NEW ATOM #12 - Ah, so it's only taken them a year to get around to promising the return of the original Atom.  Well, to be fair, the book hasn't been selling that well.  It's a strange, quirky comic which still bears the hallmarks of being based on some concepts by Grant Morrison - the lead character receives hints in anagrams, and the story is interspersed with genuinely funny adverts from the Ivy Town Chamber of Commerce trying to attract business.  ("Our only known serial killer hasn't been seen in days!  Take that, Gotham City!")  I rather enjoy it, but I suspect it's a particular brand of weirdness that's a bit too niche for the 2007 superhero audience.  Shame.  Oh well, DC can always bring back the old guy who didn't sell either.  B+

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #3 - Huh.  After a relatively strong start, I'm starting to wonder about this book.  It's still adopting a slightly odd tone where it seems to think that its characters are morally ambiguous, when in fact they're just unambiguously wrong.  The fundamental problem here is that I'm clearly reading a book about the villains, but none of the characters seem to realise that, and writer Dan Slott seems to want me to root for his Initiative students as heroes.  But I don't understand why I'd want to support anyone associated with this organisation.  I've been given no reason to like them and every reason to hate them.  I can see some promise in a couple of the trainees, but boy, this title seems to be working on some wildly inaccurate assumptions about where my sympathies lie.  B-

LONERS #3 - Worth mentioning for the completists among you, since it features the former Generation X member Penance.  Although they've renamed her "Hollow", because "Penance" has already been claimed by the World's Stupidest Character.  There's a strange dynamic in this book, as the characters are all ex-superheroes trying half-heartedly not to be superheroes - except for Phil Urich, who lost all his equipment and doesn't have a choice.  Naturally, he's especially evangelical about how everyone else should be behaving.  I can't imagine how you'd get an ongoing title out of this, but there's more than enough material to justify a miniseries, and CB Cebulski is writing an enjoyable story.  But the loose, murky style that Karl Moline has chosen for this series isn't working for me.  B

There's more from me at If Destroyed, and if you're desperate for more Article 10 columns, you can always hunt through the archives on Ninth Art.

Next week, Magik continues her return in New X-Men #39, and also shows up in the delayed Mystic Arcana: Magik one-shot.  Cable & Deadpool #41 continues "Fracture", the under-promoted crossover with X-Men.  And Clayton Henry takes over as the regular penciller on Exiles with issue #95.

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