Also this week:

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON #5 - Oh, so that's what it's meant to look like.  Joe Bennett takes over on art, and the quality of the book immediately shoots up, if only because it can now be read rather than endured.  Bennett (or maybe his inker, Jack Jadson) seems to be going for the slightest hint of Scott McDaniel here, and aside from the Falcon's alarmingly rectangular haircut, it looks rather good.  The plot, of course, is the sort of extremely complicated multi-layered conspiracy that Christopher Priest liked writing elsewhere, and it doesn't come as an enormous surprise to see Black Panther characters popping their head round the door.  I still have doubts about the long term future of this book now that Captain America itself has been moved back to the mainstream Marvel Heroes line - can there really be a market for two Captain America books, plus Avengers, every month?  Still, this is a considerable improvement on the first arc.  B

INVADERS #0 - Or The New Invaders, according to the logo.  Though the indicia doesn't agree.  I'll go with Invaders, I guess.  This is the final part of "Once an Invader", the storyline Chuck Austen began in Avengers to introduce the team.  However, while Austen was originally scheduled to co-write Invaders itself, Allan Jacobsen is now going to be doing it on his own.  The two are co-credited on this issue, but the overall impression is of Jacobsen grabbing the wheel and giving it a firm yank in a different direction.  The Thin Man turns up from nowhere, there's a suggestion of a different "real reason" behind the Invaders' formation (which Austen had attributed to the Red Skull), and the whole thing reads like an awkward attempt to shift direction and provide a set-up which the story was not originally intended to provide.  It doesn't hold together as a story, and CP Smith's odd, vaguely animation-like art is at best an acquired taste.  In fact, the core idea of a group of right-wing neo-conservative superheroes isn't bad a tall; but Invaders is a minor and relatively obscure property, and without a big name creative team, it needed to get off to a killer start.  This is not a killer start, and it doesn't bode well for the long-term future of the title.  C-

JLA #100 - Joe Kelly returns for an issue, to set up his Justice League Elite series.  The Elite are a group he originally created as Superman villains.  They're obvious analogues of the Authority, and existed largely so that Superman could demonstrate why good old fashioned heroes like him are right, and the Authority are wrong.  (It must be said that many people continue to miss the point that the Authority were, at least in Warren Ellis' incarnation, always meant to be a bit threatening.)  This time they're back with a saner leader, and joining in a clever enough scheme to thwart an Authority-style threat.  The big idea, though, is to set up a JLA splinter team to carry out black ops work.  Superman acts like this is the end of the world, but didn't they already do something similar back in the nineties with Extreme Justice?   I have my doubts about the suitability of the Elite for this kind of story, but we shall see.  As a story in its own right, this is not bad at all, and the end is set up quite nicely.  B

LOKI #1 - Miniseries (I assume) answering the all important question: what happens after Loki wins?  Actually, come to think of it, I'm sure he's won for brief periods before.  But still, it's not a bad idea for a series.  Rob Rodi's answer isn't a completely novel idea, but he sets it out well.  Loki was never really about power as an end in itself, even if he didn't realise it.  Instead, Loki's about winning, beating Thor, and enjoying the thrill of the chase.  The throne of Asgard just happened to be what they were fighting over.  So when the victory celebrations wear off, Loki finds that it's all a bit dull.  A solid first issue, and some absolutely beautiful artwork from Essad Ribic.  Worth a look.  A-

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

Next week, the Mister Sinister storyline concludes in Ultimate X-Men #49, and "Mr M" continues in District X #3.  Good to see we're getting back to slightly saner numbers of X-books after the recent deluge, to be honest.

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