Also this week...

AUTOMATIC KAFKA #6 - As part of his ongoing campaign to remain in the public eye at all costs (and thereby make it impossible to kidnap him without anyone noticing), Automatic Kafka meets up with his former teammate Helen of Troy to record a hardcore porn video.  Amusingly over the top, although I'm not convinced the book is quite as clever as it seems to think - it would be unfair to call it a case of style over content, but I'm not sure the ideas match up to the style.  B

FABLES #8 - Civil war breaks out at the Farm, and Snow White gets to use an antique gun.  Caution: includes crap jokes about the death of Cock Robin.  Still, it's fun, and beautifully drawn by the hugely underappreciated Mark Buckingham.  B

INCREDIBLE HULK #48 - Well, we've got another issue to go in this storyline, so let's drag out the climax a little bit longer.  All told, I'd rather have seen the storyline resolve this issue, but Jones continues to build tension well enough, and Stuart Immonen does his best to hold visual interest in a story with an awful lot of pages of the same three characters punching one another in pouring rain.  B

LUCIFER #33 - A single issue story, presumably as a break between arcs.  A good Muslim man finds himself drawn into Hell to help a demon in labour, and is rather unnerved by the whole thing.  Strong execution does wonders with a plot which isn't all that special.  B+

PETER PARKER, SPIDER-MAN #51 - Ah, Zeb Wells.  I like this guy, he's funny.  It's Monday morning, and Hydroman and the Shocker have to go in to work.  Fun sitcom stuff, and rather oddly it tries to at least acknowledge the ongoing storylines to boot.  Artist Ben Herrera's excessive distortions work on the comedy, but struggle somewhat when Wells is just trying to have Peter chat with his aunt.  B+

THREE DAYS IN EUROPE #2 - Rather than try to meet up with one another, Jack and Jill go to completely different cities and meet up with new partners altogether, in a romantic comedy that's now deviating quite substantially from the blueprint for these things.  Nice REM parody, as well.  A-

TRUTH: RED, WHITE & BLACK #2 - This was a good story idea, but I'm not convinced by this issue.  The story seems essentially to have two points: first, that racism is bad, and secondly, that the US government during World War II was very, very racist indeed.  Both of these being truisms, it remains to be seen what the book has to offer that will enliven the remainder of the five issue run, and the high-strung melodrama of this issue - including conspirators shooting an officer in the head in plain view of 300 troops, which is unbelievably stupid of them - doesn't really inspire confidence.  B-

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #33 - It's Ultimate Venom.  Or more accurately, it's Ultimate Eddie Brock.  Venom will be along in a couple of issues time.  This is a ground-up rethink of the character, largely a device to graft the visual onto somebody else entirely.  And that's fine by me, since Bendis plays Brock as a flawed but basically decent childhood friend of Parker, which already gets him off to a better start than the real one.  A-

Y: THE LAST MAN #6 - Into a new storyline, and the road trip across the new America continues with the cast trying to make their way to Mann's back-up laboratory.  Nice characterisation and strong art continues to make this a good read, although I'm still not wholly persuaded by the amazon extremists.  B+

The Article 10 year in review (well, sort of) will be up on Monday at Ninth Art.

Next week, Ultimate War #2, Wolverine #184, X-Statix #6 and X-Treme X-Men: X-Pose #2 are shipping, which is all very nice, but I'll be doing the X-Axis Year In Review instead.  Look for it around New Year's Eve, and the regular X-Axis will be back in two weeks.

Oh, and happy Christmas.

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