Also this week:

CABLE & DEADPOOL #26 - The first half of a two-part prologue to the Apocalypse storyline which already started in X-Men last month.  No, I don't understand the scheduling there either.  That said, the return of Apocalypse is something that definitely does need to be directly addressed in this title, since Cable's whole purpose in life was to stop Apocalypse conquering the world.  This comes off as a bit of an unwanted diversion from the main story (the recap page even bills it as "90s crossover time"), but still plays effectively off the idea that Cable's motivations are always ulterior and can't be trusted - even against an obvious bad guy like Apocalypse.  Decent.  B

MATADOR #6 - Wow, I figured I'd just missed the final issue of this.  Turns out Brian Stelfreeze has been ill, apparently, which is why we're only just getting to the final issue now.  Unfortunately, the payoff is a little unsuccessful, as we get a clear and unambiguous explanation of what's up with the enigmatic Matador.  And that's the last thing we needed, because the enigma was precisely what was interesting about him.  The rather prosaic (and implausible) explanation can only come across as a disappointment, even though there's some force to the idea that Isabel has been projecting her own desires onto the Matador by choosing to read him as an enigmatic romantic hero rather than just a mentally ill guy with nice clothes.  B-

NEW X-MEN #24 - Didn't we just have this book a couple of weeks ago?  Oh well.  It's a whole story of characters reacting to the slaughter of bit parts at the end of the previous issue, in much the ways you'd expect.  It's okay, I suppose, and I appreciate that they're trying to rack up the tension and create a real threat, but any sort of subtlety in the characters is being drowned out, and the whole book is taking on a very histrionic tone.  I realise that's what they're going for, and in many ways the book's always needed a bit more action, but we're now going too far in the other direction.  C+

PULSE #14 - Final issue of a series which never really lived up to the potential, and certainly never reached the heights of Alias.  Fortunately, Bendis reunites with Michael Gaydos for this final issue which ties up the one remaining blank spot in Jessica's history - her brief career as Knightress - and gives us a cute little miniature about how she met Luke Cage.  Nothing earth-shattering, but a pleasant resolution for Jessica's title.  B+

SENTINEL SQUAD O*N*E #3 - You know, I can't for the life of me remember what happened in this issue.  Oh yeah - Sentinels fighting telekinetic dinosaurs in the Savage Land.  There's something deeply underwhelming about this comic, which is admittedly saddled with the thankless task of writing origin stories for very minor characters, but isn't making its task any easier by leaving them as interchangeable as they were in X-Men.  Can't they at least make the Sentinels look different from one another?  They're supposed to be different models, after all.  The big problem, though, is a lack of clearly defined characters, and consequently a lack of reason to care.  This really isn't working.  C-

SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE #4 - Well, there was always bound to be one Seven Soldiers series I'd hate, and this one was it.  There's a basically decent metaphor here - Shilo's escapology is linked with our attempt to escape the restrictions placed on us in our everyday lives - but this isn't a particularly profound idea, and the last two issues have verged on garbled nonsense.  Perhaps it makes more sense if you some familiarity with the New Gods characters and already associate them with something, but regrettably, this is Morrison at his confused and pretentious worst.  Nice art, though.  C-

X-MEN: THE 198 #3 - I love it when the recap pages reveal the plot before it's actually emerged in the story, don't you?  Apparently Johnny D is making miniature clones of lots of 198 members.  Except, er, there was only one of them last issue.  Whoops.  Anyway, tensions rise as the 198 are allowed to visit town, but only with secret mind-control chips to keep them in line.  Not particularly exciting - the reasons for the mutant internment camp have never been properly established, and if the idea is that O*N*E are acting honestly in a morally difficult situation, that's certainly not coming over.  Yeah, internment's a bad thing, we get it.  A perfectly valid point, of course, but that doesn't make for an interesting five-issue miniseries.  C

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art, and there's more from me at If Destroyed.

Next week, Generation M finishes off the series and answers the question on nobody's lips: who is the serial killer anyway?  Robert Kirkman completes his first story arc in Ultimate X-Men #68.  And the unlikely X-Men: Apocalypse vs Dracula miniseries continues into its second issue.

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