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Also this week...
CABLE & DEADPOOL #41 -
Good lord, that's got to be the single most inappropriate
cover I've seen in years. This is a light comedy
adventure book. And that is a sub-Sienkiewicz smudge.
What was Skottie Young thinking? Anyway, this issue
continues the ludicrously underadvertised crossover with
X-Men. I can't understand why they haven't
promoted it more effectively, especially this this issue is
actually essential to the plot of X-Men - it explains
what happened to Sabretooth. The addition of Cable to
the X-Men roster seems to have dragged this book badly off
course from a plot that was working quite well, and I can't
say I'm enthusiastic about that. But Nicieza is making
the best of it, and gets a decent story out of the
situation, by making the derailing of Cable's plans into the
focal point of the book. B+
EXILES #95 - Another
weirdly inappropriate cover, this time from Tomm Coker.
Chris Claremont is doing a relatively upbeat tale of
inter-dimensional heroism. Okay, it's a bit downbeat
at the start, but it cheers up hugely as it goes on.
The new regular artist is Clayton Henry, whose bright, shiny
work is perfectly suited for Claremont's stories. And
Coker has given us... a minimal sketch of the team against a
black background, the whole thing seemingly marinated for a
month in a vat of urine. It's a thoroughly ugly
object. It looks like it needs medical attention.
As for the story, we're still in fairly standard territory,
but there's a little more sense in this issue of Claremont
getting to grips with the title and impressing his identity
on it. B
FABLES #62 - After an
incredibly slow build, Flycatcher finally gets to be a hero,
and we learn who was in the Forsworn Knight armour.
The interesting thing about Fables is that, unlike a
lot of other Vertigo books, it's not especially edgy and
it's not self-consciously cultish or esoteric. It's
just a well-told story about a group of fairy tale
characters living as a secret society in the real world, and
it shows what you can do with good storytelling and a strong
idea. A
NEW AVENGERS #31 - And
the big idea for the Marvel Universe for the next year is...
Skrulls! Hmm. On the one hand, I can see what
they're going for. They're going to do Invasion of
the Body Snatchers, and we're going to have a whole load
of paranoia stories where everyone could have been replaced
by an alien shapechanger. That could work. But
on the other hand... it's the Skrulls. They're little
green men from planet Zob. They do not lend themselves
to being taken seriously. They're too cheesy to fit
naturally into Brian Bendis' stories. I can see this
misfiring. But I'll give them a chance to show where
they're going with it, because it could work. As for
the rest of the issue - it's a great big fight scene, so
really, not much to write home about unless you're a big fan
of the oddly scratchy style currently being used by artist
Leinil Francis Yu. B-
NEW X-MEN #39 - Part two
of "Quest for Magik", and this storyline is already looking
overstretched. If you enjoyed part one, well, good
news, because here it is again. Belasco tortures
people and demands to know where Illyana is. Illyana
shows up and acts enigmatically, without bearing much
resemblance to the character from New Mutants, and
without being particularly interesting on any other level.
And once again, New X-Men has wildly misjudged the
degree of peril. There's too little character and too
much gratuitous slaughter. And when they start killing
off people like X-23, it's patently obvious that it won't
stick. This wouldn't be a problem if the journey was an
interesting one, but it simply isn't. In the key
emotional moment of the issue, we're apparently invited to
care about whether Pixie give up her soul to empower Magik.
But why would we? It's Pixie! She's a generic
background character who's never done anything of interest.
She was only kept around after M-Day to pad out the numbers
in the school! I really don't understand why the
writers think we're going to care about any of this -
especially given that these are the same people who wrote
two very good X-23 miniseries, so they can clearly do
better. C
STORMWATCH PHD #8 -
Caught up in the mire of the WildStorm relaunch,
StormWatch PHD might be the most underappreciated team
book being published at the moment. Where most
attempts at vaguely edgy superhero team books have either
tried to reinvent the wheel or gone for gratuitous shock
value, StormWatch has the heart of an old-school team
book and just wanders a little further than normal from that
structure. A neat aspect of the series is that we're
following the adventures of StormWatch's low-budget B-team,
while the real team is apparently off having adventures of
their own in a book that isn't being published. This
issue brings the teams together, with some nicely written
personality clashes. Good stuff. 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, there's just one X-book, but
it's a potentially important one - Endangered Species,
the one-shot which starts the build-up to the next
crossover. Are they, as I hope, about to embark on a
salvage operation to get the X-books back on track? Or
are things about to get even worse? This time next
week, we might have a clue.
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