Also among this week's comics...

CEREBUS #289/290 - Yes, the number's correct - this is a double issue to get the book back on schedule.  It's also the first two parts of "Latter Days Part II", which turns out to be just a continuation of the interminably dull "Chasing YHWH."  But, if anything, the insanity quota has risen even higher.  In the first half of this storyline - and I use the term loosely - Cerebus minutely dissected the Book of Genesis to expound on his theory that references to "YWHW" are in fact to a feminine spin-off of God who keeps getting things wrong, because she's a girl.  This issue consists entirely of Cerebus dreaming while Dave Sim expounds on his theory on the history of the universe in mock-Biblical prose, complete with footnotes sprawling across the bottom of the page, making it unambiguously clear that this is Sim's own view.  It's the comic as essay, which would be interesting if Sim's reasoning hadn't so clearly nuts.  "It seems to me that God has given men and women an equivalent numerical presence in the world so that anyone (willing to look at the evidence through unprejudiced eyes) would recognize the implicit disparity between man's accomplishments (in the Image of God) and women's accomplishments (in the image of the spirit of God, in the image of the light which came forth upon the Word, and in the image of the Word)."  Yes, that's right, Sim believes that men and women exist in equal numbers so that the differences between them will be clearly apparent.  Quite why they would not be noticeable in a 3:2 ratio, he doesn't really explain.  Anyhow, it seems that Cerebus is ending with a twelve issue non-fiction essay on the world according to Dave Sim, with Special Reference to Why Women Suck.  Horribly compelling, for all the wrong reasons.  C-

FILTH #11 - Ah, the big reveal.  Of course, my Scottish nationalist sentiments - such as they are - bristle at a story titled "A Very English Nervous Breakdown" and given a cover based on the Union Jack, which is not the flag of England.  Bad England.  Bad.  Anyhow, this is the explanation - more or less - of everything we've seen so far, and it manages the all-important trick of coming as a surprise while still making perfect sense.  God, I love Grant Morrison comics.  Plus, needless to say, Chris Weston makes it look fantastic from start to finish.  A

INCREDIBLE HULK #55 - This is the 25c issue released to tie in with the movie, although the fact that the movie isn't out yet suggests a scheduling problem to me.  Purists have made something of the fact that the Hulk doesn't actually appear in this story, which normally doesn't bother me in Jones' work - after all, Banner is the Hulk, and that's the central idea.  But then again, this is the big tie-in issue for the film that, uh, isn't out yet, and this might have been the time to do a single-issue story.  Anyway, if you ignore all that stuff, it's a pleasant break from the conspiracy material (which was verging on self-parody - how many convolutions and internal betrayals can one government conspiracy have?).  The Absorbing Man, in blatant disregard of his role as a supporting character in Thor, is in jail and is using a power very, very tenuously related to his existing abilities to interfere with people's minds.  Quite good as a mystery story, although it really does take a huge stretch of the imagination to accept this stuff as even remotely connected to the Absorbing Man's defined abilities.  Debuting on art, Leandro Fernandez does his usual solid storytelling, as well as giving the Absorbing Man a suitably sinsiter look - albeit one totally unrelated to the way he's being used over in Thor, but I suppose it's out of fashion to comment on that sort of thing.  B+

POWERS #32 - Brian Bendis' survey of the history of superpowers in the Powers universe continues, as we get up to Conan the Barbarian.  (Which is only even covered in the Marvel Universe because they happened to pick up the licence to the character.  But I digress.)  A pattern is fairly obviously emerging in this storyline, and I'm interested to see where Bendis is heading with this - presumably there's some pay-off at the end of this rather than a bunch of disconnected flashbacks, because it certainly has no obvious relevance to the present day material thus far.  Audacious, though, and largely successful.  B+

PUNISHER #28 - I wasn't wild about Tom Mandrake as the artist on this series - something about his style just didn't work for black comedy.  This time round we have Cam Kennedy on art, and he's much more like it.  Okay, his male characters all look decidedly similar and chiselled, but this plays better into the black comedy angle that Garth Ennis has chosen to use on this book.  I'm slightly surprised Ennis is still working on this book - it's been a while now, and he's a relentlessly one-dimensional character - but even without any particular direction in evidence, he continues to find entertaining angles for the stories.  B+

Last week's Article 10 is still up at Ninth Art.

Next week, the second issues of New Mutants and Wolverine, the third issue of Sentinel, and yet another Wolverine miniseries - Spider-Man & Wolverine - begins.  Plus, Uncanny X-Men #426.

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