Also this week...

HARD TIME #7 -  Concluding the series with a jokey "49 Years Later" issue, as Ethan comes up for parole and basically tells us what would have happened in the upcoming series.  Like all prematurely cancelled comics, the book knows it can't wrap up its storylines effectively in the way it had planned, and shifts gear entirely to make sure that at least we know the ending.  Needless to say, it isn't entirely satisfying, but I suppose it's better than the alternative of leaving stories unresolved just because they ran out of pages.  The failure of Hard Time and the other DC Focus books - even though some of them were quite good - tends to confirm my theory that the trend for hybridising superheroes with other genres was a dead end.  The other audiences that publishers want to reach are too far removed from the superhero audience, and the superhero audience doesn't much care for material outside the established parameters.  (That's not to say they don't enjoy other types of stories - they just don't get them from comics.)  The crossover audience just doesn't exist in significant numbers, and the result is comics that fail to please anyone other than a tiny segment of fans like me.  Perhaps they should have made it a Vertigo book, but it's too late now.  B

NEW X-MEN #27 - Yes, I realise that technically this is the end of a four-part storyline called "Crusade."  And technically that means it ought to be getting a full review.  But by all appearances it's merely the middle act of a twelve-issue storyline, continuing with the upcoming "Nimrod" arc - there was certainly no meaningful distinction between the last two arcs - and I'm treating it accordingly.  Besides which, I have to admit that I've rather lost interest with the book.  Yes, fine, the new creative team have come on and shaken things up... but by this stage, they're still killing off minor supporting characters, and really, who cares?  In the months since M-Day, not only have they killed off the Banshee and all the living relatives of Jean Grey, but this title has been blasting its way through minor cast members like there was no tomorrow.  Presumably this is meant to convince us that the stakes are high, but it's been so overdone in recent months that it just seems rather tiresome.  New X-Men, in particular, has become unremittingly miserable to the point where it's just no fun at all to read.  By all means take the action route, because the book's previous incarnation arguably needed a kick up the arse, but for heaven's sake cheer up.  Or at least think of a different way of being miserable, before you completely run out of background characters to shoot.  To be honest, I should probably be giving it a proper review, but life's just too short.  Especially in this title.  Technically it's alright, but... I just can't raise the energy.  B-

Last week's Ninth Art column is still up, and there's more from me at If Destroyed.

Next week, the Exiles finally complete their World Tour storyline in Exiles #82, and the Phoenix arc concludes in Ultimate X-Men #71.  Wolverine fights Nuke, of all people, in Wolverine: Origins #3.  And Citizen V guest stars in Cable & Deadpool #29.

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