Also this week...

HOUSE OF M: AVENGERS #1 - The origin story of Luke Cage's resistance group from the House of M miniseries.  If I recall my House of M cosmology correctly, none of this stuff actually happened, and it's all just a bunch of false memories.  So we're being asked to care about a story comprised entirely of events that, within the logic of the story, didn't take place and have already been reversed.  Not sure about that as a starting point, and besides, do we really need to revisit the House of M storyline this far down the line?  Still, it's Christos Gage and Mike Perkins, and they do a perfectly acceptable job of telling Luke Cage's story.  It's better than it really has any right to be, and the craftsmanship is fine, but it can't quite get over the fact that there's no good reason to care.  B

SIMON DARK #2 - Steve Niles and Scott Hampton's horror/superhero hybrid doesn't seem like an obvious commercial winner, and to say that it wears its influences on its sleeve would be putting it mildly.  It's more a case of taking a load of ideas from assorted pop-horror characters and sticking them in a blender.  But the child-like monster is a recurrent concept for a reason, and the creators have managed to make Simon into a strangely loveable character, however blatantly his forerunners may hover over him.  B+

WOLVERINE #59 - Um.  More of Wolverine in the afterlife, this time going on a vaguely dream-like tour of events from his past.  It's almost jarring these days to see a writer making such heavy and explicit use of past continuity.  Curiously, despite devoting most of an issue to Wolverine's history, writer Marc Guggenheim chooses to entirely ignore Wolverine: Origins.  Can't say I blame him, but it reads rather oddly.  I suppose I can see what Guggenheim's going for with this storyline, but it doesn't do much for me.  C

WORLD WAR HULK #5 - And then the Sentry showed up and beat the shit out of him, the end.  To be fair, Greg Pak's been building to this in subplots throughout the series, but it still doesn't quite work for me as a finish.  The problem, I think, is that the Hulk's spent the entire story fighting a bunch of characters he has a real issue with, and then the story ends in a fight with the Sentry, whom he has no issue with at all.  Sentry just happens to be a character who has the right power-set to end the story.  Still, John Romita Jr does draw a very pretty fight scene, doesn't he?  He does almost enough for the series to get away with it, but in plot terms, the ending can't help but feel a little anticlimactic.  B+

X-MEN: DIE BY THE SWORD #3 - The Exiles and Excalibur spend another thrilling issue standing around in their headquarters, while James Jaspers fights the Captain Britain Corps.  Actually, despite the largely peripheral role for the fourteen (!) lead characters, this is quite good fun, in an old-school cosmic superhero sort of way.  It suffers by contrast with Alan Davis on the original Excalibur series - a comparison that it can't help evoke, since a lot of his old character designs have been dug out for this issue.  But for what it is, it's entirely fine.  B

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, "Messiah Complex" continues in New X-Men #44.  Captain America is still guest starring in Wolverine: Origins #19.  And X-Men: Emperor Vulcan #3 continues the new Starjammers' miniseries.

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