Also this week...

BOOSTER GOLD #2 - Hmm.  This is a perfectly pleasant old-school superhero series, but it's very much embedded in DC continuity.  Basically, it's Exiles crossed with What If? - Booster goes back in time each month to stop people messing about with history.  And it seems that history is mainly going to be the history of other, more famous superheroes.  So, while it's not as mired in continuity as DC's recent crossovers, it's still very much a book for the DC fanboy.  Now, there's nothing wrong with that - you could level the same charge at Exiles, which has had several perfectly entertaining years.  But I'm not sure it's really for someone like me who doesn't have that affection for the DCU.  B

DAREDEVIL #100 - Celebrating one hundred fabulous issues since the most recent arbitrary reboot.  This means a couple of bonus reprints and an extended dream scene allowing old Daredevil artists to come back and draw a couple of pages in their old style.  Since this means John Romita Sr and Bill Sienkiewicz in the same sequence, it's a bit of a style clash.  Brubaker is able to stop it from feeling completely gratuitous by using it as a sort of "life flashing before your eyes" routine that makes reasonable sense in the context of the story - although there's no getting away from the fact that it's still a bit contrived.  And perennial D-lister Mr Fear seems an odd choice of villain for the big anniversary story.  It all hangs together surprisingly well, though, even when logic says it shouldn't.  B+

ULTIMATE X-MEN #86 - More Sentinels, more Mutant Liberation Front.  There's something quite comforting about this book, in that at least it's set in a world that has plenty of mutants, and it can still do normal X-Men stories.  But there's not much momentum to this story.  There's a little bit of progress, but it feels as though a lot of fighting has been thrown in to pad out a fairly basic story.  Totally inoffensive, and even quite entertaining so far as it goes, but the overall pace of the series feels a bit slow.  B

X-FACTOR #23 - The Isolationist storyline continues, as Huber's villainous schemes are exposed before seeming to get anywhere remotely near fruition.  Not that X-Factor are necessarily effective enough to do anything about it, mind you.  I think I see where this is going - Huber can hear the thoughts of all other mutants, which drives him mad, and he seems M-Day as an opportunity to do them all in for good.  Once again, Peter David is the only writer who seems to be finding any real material in the M-Day premise (beyond simply reversing it), which just goes to show how good he is at working with whatever he's handed.  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, New X-Men #42 begins a two-part story leading into "Messiah Complex", while Captain America guest stars in Wolverine: Origins #17.  (Don't get too worked up, it's only a flashback.)

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