Also this week:

ANGEL STOMP FUTURE - Another of Warren Ellis' Apparat books finally reaches the shelves.  The Apparent concept is meant to be four imaginary first issues of books that might exist if comics were modern versions of other pulp genres rather than based on superheroes.  Angel Stomp Future is, of course, the sci-fi book, and the one which veers closest to Ellis self-parody.  It's basically a monologue to camera, interspersed with some of the nihilistic surreal weirdness that cropped up from time to time in Transmetropolitan.  Juan Jose Ryp's art is wonderfully detailed, although it occasionally gets lost in clutter.  Okay if you like this sort of thing, but it's very much a retreading of old ground for Ellis.  B-

SIMON SPECTOR - And here's Ellis' take on the Shadow-type hero.  And this one's pretty good; you can easily imagine this guy carrying his own series in some alternate universe where readers are remotely interested in such genres.  The vastly underrated Jacen Burrows provides his usual quality art, and the montage page where Spector solves the crime using accelerated-thought drugs is wonderful stuff.  Very good.  A+

NEW THUNDERBOLTS #4 - Listed here because it happens to include a crossover from Wolverine's "Enemy of the State" storyline.  That's "crossover" in the sense that Wolverine won't be mentioning this issue at all, but they thought it might prop up sales, I suspect.  New Invaders has got one next week.  Since HYDRA feature heavily in both books, New Thunderbolts actually has a good reason to deal with this story; unfortunately, it obviously doesn't really want to, as Wolverine is grudgingly shoehorned in between ongoing stories while the Purple Man delivers a sarcastic voiceover complaining about the thuggishness of the plot.  It also doesn't seem to reflect the Wolverine story I've been reading - I could have sworn Strucker was involved with the scheme to control Wolverine, while here the scheme is attributed to a splinter faction who want to kill him.  Perhaps it's just running ahead of the Wolverine story, but it certainly causes confusion.  The issue would have been better without the tie-in, but there's still reasonable interest to be had from the other ongoing stories.  B-

SPIDER-MAN/HUMAN TORCH #1 - Dan Slott and Ty Templeton doing a self-contained team-up story set back in the Silver Age.  Every bit as good as you'd expect.  Fun without seeming overly retro, this captures what made that period so enjoyable.  Textbook mainstream superheroics, the sort of book that reminds you why you find them so charming in the first place.  A

STORMBREAKER: THE SAGA OF BETA RAY BILL #1 - Following the surprising popularity of their Thor wrap-up, the creative team migrate to a Beta Ray Bill miniseries.  It may seem a bit of an odd choice, but it turns out quite well.  Rather than play him as a Thor knock-off, the focus is on the core concept that Bill is the top-notch superhero for his people.  He's in more of a Superman role here, on a planet where there aren't any other superheroes around.  Cue cosmic battles and interfering priests who wish the public would pay less attention to Bill and more to them.  A lot of us thought the idea of a Beta Ray Bill miniseries was faintly ludicrous, but credit where credit's due - if anything, it's better than their Thor run.  A-

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art.

Next week, Cable/Deadpool #11 begins the two-part "Thirty Pieces".  Exiles #58 continues the Sasquatch storyline.  Madrox finishes his miniseries.  Nightcrawler #5 starts a new two-parter, "Ghosts on the Rails".  Tony Bedard and Karl Moline take over Rogue with issue #7.  Wolverine #24 continues "Enemy of the State."  Wolverine: The End finally finishes, many many months late.  And Peter Milligan takes over X-Men with issue #166. 

Completists may wish to note that "Enemy of the State" crosses over into New Invaders #6, although given the general standard of that title, I wouldn't bother if I were you.

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