Also this week...

NOVA #2 - Nova has just come out of the Annihilation crossover, and he's just going into the next one.  The character's status quo roots him in outer space, as does his primary agenda of saving the universe and (eventually) rebuilding the Corps.  So issue #2 is... an Initiative crossover?  This is a really shameless piece of sales-chasing.  Abnett and Lanning make the best of it, and take the opportunity to give the New Warriors a bit of closure.  But it didn't need to be done at this stage, and it doesn't really fit with the way Nova was behaving last issue.  Shouldn't he be desperate to get back out to the stars and carry on his mission?  Within the limits of the remit, this is fine, but whatever commercial arguments you can make for it, it's a creative mistake.  B-

PHONOGRAM #6 - Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie complete their six issue Britpop miniseries.  As they rightly stress, this isn't just a nostalgia piece for those of us who were around during Britpop and who remember the role that bands like Echobelly played in the movement.  It's a story about nostalgia, and pop culture and the role that it plays in our individual and collective identities, and it simply happens to have taken Britpop as its case study.  Even so, I suspect it's not going to be the most accessible series in the world if you're too young or too foreign to know about Pulp.  But everyone should know about Pulp, so go and buy their records, and then buy the collected edition of this.  Or vice versa.  That would work too.  Accessibility issues aside, it's an ambitious series that succeeds admirably in its exploration of what music can mean.  A

STORMWATCH: PHD #7 - The recent WildStorm relaunch has been a bit of a disaster, with low sales and massive delays.  This is a shame, because it means that nobody is buying Christos Gage and Doug Mahnke's thoroughly enjoyable StormWatch: PhD, a book which cheerfully ignores the proper StormWatch team to focus on the ramshackle, lower-budget B-team.  This is an action issue, with our heroes fighting off the villains from their police station, but it's a great example of how to make these things work with more than just random brawling for twenty pages.  A sadly overlooked book.  A-

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 is ridiculously heavy.  It's hard to believe, I know, but Uncanny X-Men #486 is the twelfth and final part of "Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire."  Exiles #94 completes Chris Claremont's first arc, and in X-Men: First Class Special, a range of guest artists contribute to stories of the original, sixties team.  Ultimate X-Men #82 sees Bishop forming his own version of the team, Cable & Deadpool #40 begins the three-part "Fractured" (which ties in with X-Men), and X-Factor #19 sees the ex-mutants take to the streets.

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