Also this week...

CABLE & DEADPOOL #28 - With the awkward business of Apocalypse out of the way, Cable & Deadpool gets back to the important business of overthrowing governments.  This time it's the fictional country of Rumekistan, which Flag-Smasher conquered a few years back in a Fabian Nicieza story you've probably never read.  (Citizen V & The V-Battalion: The Everlasting, to be exact.)  The background doesn't really matter, though - Flag-Smasher has finally "liberated" a country from nationalist rule and is busy imposing its own unique interpretation of personal freedom.  On the one hand I'm a little unsure about this direction for Flag-Smasher, since he's much more interesting as a Captain America villain when he's a sincere anti-nationalist ideologue.  But this isn't Captain America, and there's plenty of good material here around the subject of revolutions gone wrong.  This month's guest artist is somebody called Reilly Brown, who I've never heard of before.  But he's really good, in a "very slightly manga" sort of way, and I would love to see more from him.  A

NEW X-MEN #26 - This issue: more religious killing.  I'm starting to get a little antsy about the pace here.  To judge from the solicitations, even though it's been broken down into four-part arcs, this is really part seven of twelve.  We've had six months of utter misery already and I really think it's past time to turn the corner and go for the upswing.  The continuity nitpicker in me grumbles about what appear to be real-time continuity references - X-Treme X-Men was "several years ago"?! - not to mention an admittedly cute time travel paradox involving Nimrod which is far too convoluted to explain here but doesn't fit with Marvel's normal time travel rules.  But that's trivia.  My big concern here is that this book is going overboard on the grinding misery, and it's just not much fun to read.  Sure, the title was crying out for a little more drama and action, but can't it lighten up a little bit?  There are plenty of ideas here which I like, but it's so overwhelming dark that it's becoming a problem.  B

SHE-HULK #7 - Well, this is going to irk the purists.  This is the second half of a two-parter that I wouldn't really have expected from a traditionalist like Dan Slott.  Starfox returns, and he's still doing his schtick of charming women with his happiness powers.  One woman accuses him of rape, and the twist is that there is no twist - Starfox is indeed a guy who uses mind control powers to get women into bed, and he's totally unrepentant about it.  To be fair, there's apparently a sequel planned, so Slott might have something else in mind, but I don't have a problem with anything we see here.  The central conceit here is that this isn't a retcon - this is exactly how Starfox was always written, but it isn't the 1970s any more, and when you stop to think about it, he's just plain creepy.  He's a character from a bygone and decidedly pre-PC era, and meeting that head-on is an interesting decision.  A

UNCANNY X-MEN #473 - With Chris Claremont out of action due to illness, we're now into a phase of Claremont plots and Tony Bedard scripts.  You could do a lot worse.  (Fortunately, X-Men: The End seems to have been written further in advance - it would have been a shame for that book to end with guest writers coming on.)  It's a romp with Jamie Braddock messing about with reality and a bunch of cosmic-powered randoms showing up to cause trouble near the end, but it has enough energy to carry it through despite being, frankly, a bit incoherent.  The chameleonic Roger Cruz fills in on art and entertains me hugely by doing a Chris Bachalo impression.  It says something for Bachalo's current style that Cruz cloning him is actually a step up.  B

Last week's Article 10 is still up at Ninth Art, and there's more from me at If Destroyed.  Well, there will be soon.  Honest.  It's been a busy couple of weeks.

Next week, in one of the more unlikely projects of recent years, X-Men: Fairy Tales #1 begins a miniseries offering folk tales reinterpreted with the X-Men.  No, seriously.  Meanwhile, X-Men #186 concludes the "Blood of Apocalypse" storyline, and Ultimate X-Men #70 has more of Robert Kirkman.  And for the masochists or the hard-to-bore, there's issue #2 of Wolverine: Origins.

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