Also this week...

CLAWS #2 - In case it's slipped your mind over the last month, this is the three-part Wolverine & Black Cat miniseries, and it's every bit as superfluous as that sounds.  I suppose it's harmless enough in its way, but in a world deluged with Wolverine projects, there's no space for another one unless it's seriously good.  Even without taking that into account, this is just another derivative Arcade story with less charm than many.  Boring and pointless. C

ESCAPISTS #3 - Brian Vaughan continues his miniseries riffing on the superhero from Michael Chabon's novel Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, as our hapless indie creators continue their attempt to bring him back to the mainstream.  This issue, the book turns out to be a success, which to put it mildly calls for a tremendous leap of faith.  But the characters are wonderfully developed, and there's a tremendously clever sequence where Max and Case's romance scene is done by redialoguing the superhero art they're working on at the time.  Excellent use of two completely different artists, and a clever little book all round.  It builds up enough good will that I'm prepared to let it away with the fairy tale success.  A

NEW EXCALIBUR #11 - We're still in Frank Tieri's interim issues while Claremont is off recuperating.  Reasonably enough, Tieri is introducing his own storylines and moving on with those, so this is the middle chapter of a three-parter with Excalibur travelling back in time to save Camelot.  It's nothing flashy, and there's some obvious padding - three straight pages of exposition?! - but overall it's actually not bad at all.  It's a straightforward, old-style team book story, and does just fine on that level.  B+

NEW X-MEN #30 - Lord, is this storyline still going?  This issue, the New X-Men arrive in Dallas and fight Nimrod.  It's taken way, way too long to get to this point, and quite honestly, I'm just tuning out now and hoping that the next arc will be better.  Paco Medina's art is nice if hectic, and in theory I like the team they've set up here.  But the book has been in histrionic mode for so long now that it's impossible to care.  C

SPIDER-MAN: BLACK AND BLUE AND READ ALL OVER - Curious one-shot which pairs a reprint of Amazing Spider-Man #12 with an original story by Jim Krueger and Drew Johnson based on the concept of... er, Spider-Man unmasking.  Yes, that's right, Marvel is offloading an inventory story that can't be used any more because it's been invalidated by Civil War.  Heaven only knows how long this one's been lying in a drawer - there's a "This story takes place before the events of Civil War" banner, but if you read closely, it's actually way back before 2004's "Avengers Disassembled."  It's perfectly okay as these stories go, and there's a cute "How are they going to get out of that?" finish where Spider-Man does unmask without revealing his true identity.  Well, if you're prepared to be slightly charitable, anyway.  B

WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #6 - I've only just noticed that the address on the letters page is for a comic called Marvel Knights Wolverine.  Hmm.  Anyway, we're into the second arc, and now Wolverine is looking for Omega Red on the grounds that he needs some carbonadium to use in a future story.  You remember carbonadium, Omega Red used to talk about it all the time in 1992.  Although the title has at least picked up pace from the sleepy torpor of earlier issues, it's still less than thrilling.  But perhaps the biggest problem is that Way is doing a slow-burn mystery here, and bluntly, I have absolutely no faith that it's heading somewhere interesting.  It just doesn't feel like a story; it's more of an attempt to drag things out for as long as humanly possible.  God, I dread reading this bloody comic every month.  It's not as bad as it used to be, but it's still one of the dullest things Marvel produce.  C-

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, X-Men: First Class #1 begins a miniseries of stories set back in the X-Men's very early days.  "Civil War" continues in Wolverine #46 and Civil War: X-Men #3.  Astonishing X-Men makes a remarkable return to monthly shipping with issue #17.  The Singularity Investigations storyline continues in X-Factor #11.  And Exiles #86 promises Wolverines aplenty.

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