Also this week...

AUTHORITY #2 - This came out last week, but I seem to have picked it up by accident.  Grant Morrison and Gene Ha's Authority relaunch has gone horribly off the rails - this issue comes out several months late, while the next one is off the schedules altogether.  While issue #1 seemed to be a bizarre formal experiment with the Authority barely present, this time it turns out that we're in a much more conventional story, at least by Morrison's standards.  The Authority have accidentally travelled through to the real world, and they're trying to find a way home.  Except Midnighter, who wants to smash up evil.  Judged purely on its own terms, it's alright.  But Morrison has done this before, and done it better.  It's disappointing to see him relaunching a book that desperately needed a fresh direction with an idea that he's recycled several times previously.  B-

THUNDERBOLTS #112 - Hmm.  Not quite as one-dimensional as I'd feared, and at least the team members held over from the previous roster are trying to hold their own.  But there's still a glaring credibility problem with the whole affair.  We're still being asked to believe that the American public, or at least a large chunk of them, are cheerfully accepting a team partly composed of murderers who go around beating up minor league superheroes in public displays of ultraviolence.  Since we also have George Bush's spokesman arguing that the Green Goblin's past career of murderous insanity is no worse than the President's own alcoholism, it seems that the intended reading is this: any public stupid enough to accept George Bush is stupid enough to accept the Thunderbolts.  I have my doubts about the commercial wisdom of hiring a British writer to tell American readers that they're drooling morons, but hey, if that's the angle, that's the angle.  From a British perspective, it is indeed arguable that the Bush administration long since became detached from any conventional notions of credibility.  But the Thunderbolts are so obviously ridiculous that it's a tough metaphor to justify, especially when you consider that Bush's poll ratings are rock bottom even without him deputising serial killers to murder terrorists without trial (which would be the rough real-world equivalent).  This is a very strange comic, based on a combination of undisguised contempt for the American government and anyone who supports them, plus bizarre sequences trying to rehabilitate Z-list superheroes from the remotest corners of the Official Handbook so that they get our sympathy when Bullseye kills them.  For all the hype, I can't begin to imagine who the natural audience for this book might be.  But it's weirdly compelling just by being so bizarre.  B-

WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #12 - Cyber makes his return, as a ghost possessing a passing Superman knock-off.  Meanwhile, the book continues to try and convince us that Wolverine's son Daken is just the coolest thing ever.  The result is a bit like the Simpsons episode where they add Poochie to the Itchy and Scratchy show.  There just doesn't seem to be anything to Daken beyond a collection of elements that are clearly begging us to accept him as immensely cool.  In practice, this means that he has a ridiculous character design and wanders around killing people.  You want a possible relative who serves as a dark version of Wolverine and callously kills innocent characters with his claws?  Use Sabretooth.  The same idea was done with him, infinitely better, about fifteen years ago, and repeatedly ever since.  We don't need Daken just to do the same thing with a stupid haircut.  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, absolutely tons of X-books, although much to my relief, most of them are in mid-storyline.  X-Men #197 begins the three-part "Condition Critical", while X-Men: First Class #7 finally gets around to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  X-Factor #17 introduces X-MAD, the ex-mutant terrorist group.  Psylocke fights her new teammates in Exiles #92.  Jack the Ripper shows up in Wisdom #4.  X-23: Target X #4 continues the second volume of her origin story.  And pushed back from the previous week - because there weren't enough X-books on the schedule already, were there - there's Cable & Deadpool #38.

back | continue