Also among this week's comics...

1602 #2 - Sales for issue #1 of Gaiman's pseudohistorical miniseries have been gratifyingly high, to the extent that it must be bringing in a weird crossover audience of Gaiman loyalists and superhero fans who heard that he was meant to be good.  To be honest, this is not going to go down as one of Gaiman's top pieces of work.  But taken in the spirit it's obviously intended - an affectionate play with old Silver Age characters, in a setting that yanks them somewhat into Gaiman's territory - it does make for perfectly enjoyable reading.  I still wonder whether the story can maintain the interest of both camps, because surely they're looking for totally different things.  B+

CAPTAIN AMERICA #17 - At long last, a change of approach.  Dave Gibbons and Lee Weeks take over for a storyline which isn't the most original premise in the world - Cap is woken from the ice in a world where the Germans won the second world war.  It's not entirely clear from this issue whether it's meant to be an "altered history" set-up where the world gets set right at the end, or whether we're just abandoning normal continuity altogether for this issue.  The Red Skull's dialogue suggests the former.  It's not exactly subtle - the Statue of Liberty has been replaced with a giant Hitler, and the Empire State Building is now the Reichstag - and really, there's nothing new here.  But Gibbons and Weeks work the idea as well as could be expected, and the redesigned New York is undeniably striking.  ("Across the river, the Hermann Goering International Airport.")  Frankly, the character is much more suited to this more traditional approach than the misfiring experiments that we've seen from this title to date.  B

FABLES #17 - Fans of the extended fight scene won't want to miss this issue, as it includes seven straight pages of Snow White versus Goldilocks - to the death!  With a machete!  Come on, that's got to be worth your $2.50.  Snow White, Goldilocks, machete.  Where else are you going to get that kind of action?  Meanwhile, Prince Charming disposes of a dead body, by wandering around carrying it over his shoulder and announcing loudly "I'm just going to dispose of this dead body."  What a great issue.  A

GOTHAM CENTRAL #11 - In just a few short months, Gotham Central has already cemented its position as one of those titles that reviewers recommend but nobody actually buys.  In an attempt to do something about that, issue #11 is a self-contained story which doubles as an unabashed jumping-on point.  Stacy, the girl who works the Bat Signal, writes to her friend about the department, and works in some actual story in amidst explaining the cast.  Much better than I'm making it sound, albeit that it reads kind of like an issue of Astro City with the lights dimmed.  Of course, I roll my eyes at the pseudo-law - sorry, but if the police aren't allowed to work the Signal themselves for legal reasons, they can't get round that by just hiring somebody from a temp agency to do it for them.  The basic principles of agency have only been established for, what, a couple of thousand years...?  A

SUPREME POWER #2 - Straczynski and Frank's JLA update continues with what amounts to a crash course in the origin stories for the other major characters.  Aquaman is turned into a thoroughly creepy hybrid; the death of Batman's parents is relocated to a lynching; Wonder Woman's just rather weird.  Basically, everything is still clearly within the range of superhero origin stories but is positioned to come off as slightly warped and downbeat in comparison with the relevant DC character.  Meanwhile, Hyperion decides to go to school, and nobody's in a position to say no to him.  Fortunately, that storyline avoids the most obvious endings, and is all the better for it.  Pretty good - it's still in the territory of playing parlour games with the JLA at this point, but it's laying the groundwork to deviate further from the template.  And it's a good looking book, a couple of wide-eyed glitches aside.  I'm enjoying this more than I'd expected to.  A- 

There's another Article 10 up at Ninth Art on Monday.

Next week, the Simone/Udon peroration continues in Agent X #14; the Spider-Man/Wolverine miniseries concludes; the Draco arc continues in Uncanny X-Men #431; more of the Underground in Weapon X #12; and the much-delayed penultimate issue of Wolverine: Snikt!.  Some of you may also be interested in the Exiles vol 5 trade paperback, which collects the Chuck Austen fill-in issues, though obviously I wouldn't recommend it.

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