Also among this week's comics...

CEREBUS #296 - Straitjackets at the ready, the end is in sight.  This issue, Cerebus fails to get the door open for the ninth month running.  And to be fair, this final arc is proving to combine Sim's current insanity with touches of his old comic flair.  Of course, it wouldn't be a twenty-first century issue of Cerebus without rampaging, crippling lunacy.  Sim gets off to a fabulous start in that regard with a double-page spread showing the PC brigade outside Cerebus' santuary as child molestors, and then departs the rails entirely in the second half of his exchange of correspondence with poor beleaguered Chester Brown.  Though the heading says "Chester Brown discusses his graphic novel, Louis Riel", that subject's long since gone out of the window as Sim rails about religion and feminism, and accuses the hapless Brown of "evasiveness and foot-dragging", which are "the traits of a feminist."  You'll laugh, you'll gawp, you'll cry.  C

HAWKEYE #2 - You'll be pleased to hear that Hawkeye doesn't actually wear that rather ill-advised costume he's sporting on the cover - the one that makes him look like Jon Bon Jovi with a leather and archery fetish.  Mind you, for some reason he's developed an interest in body paint.  Not wholly convinced by that one.  Regardless, Nicieza is clearly taking this title in the relatively grounded direction that worked well for him on Nomad.  Whether it's a direction that Hawkeye's fanbase will particularly want to see, I'm not so sure, but it works for me.  Nicieza's plots are showing slight signs of over-complexity again, but still within the bounds of reason.  B

HUMAN TARGET #4 - Issue #4 and we're already onto the third storyline.  Now that's something you don't get to say often these days.  I'm pleasantly surprised to see that Milligan has actually been playing this series more or less straight, rather than overusing the device of having Chance become completely submerged in the characters he's impersonating.  This time round, Chance impersonates an underachieving baseball player, having been absolutely assured that he won't be called upon to play.  You can probably guess where this is heading.  Quirky without letting that dominate the series, this is pretty much Milligan with a straight bat in comparison to most of his work.  Pretty good.  A-

LUCIFER #44 - Don't think I've mentioned this book in a while.  It's just finished off the "Brothers In Arms" storyline - an unfashionably short three-parter - as the cast continue to deal with the abdication of God and the attempt by two overambitious Titans to occupy the vacant post.  Okay, so it's got one of those dodgy endings where something impossible happens and then the lead character rambles about magic for a couple of panels in order to explain it.  It's still been a relatively fun change of pace.  B+

SPIDER-MAN / DOCTOR OCTOPUS: OUT OF REACH #1 - Yes, that's two Spider-Man/Dr Octopus miniseries at the same time.  Plus the storyline that's appearing in Spectacular Spider-Man.  It means Marvel are going to have plenty of trade paperbacks ready for the movie tie-in market, but it also means they're saturating the market with Dr Octopus stories.  As with the other mini, this is a fairly straightforward and old school superhero story, presumably intended as a suitable story for the entry-level superhero reader drawn in by the movie.  If you're an existing comics reader then frankly, you've seen all this before.  But Mitchell and Grant do it likeably enough, and Grant seems to be enjoying himself much more than he did on New Mutants.  (Things move.  Things go boom.  Artist happy.)  Perfectly acceptable.  B

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art.

Thanks to the very many of you who e-mailed to point out that Cable & Deadpool #1 didn't ship this week because it's being resolicited for next March.

Next week, more of "Planet X" in New X-Men #149.  And on the principle that every silver lining has a cloud, there's also Uncanny X-Men #433. 

Elsewhere in the X-books, Emma Frost #5 continues her origin story; the resolicited Mystique #8 continues "Tinker, Tailor, Mutant, Spy"; X-Statix #16 ploughs on with the heavily amended Princess Diana storyline; and for the masochists amongst you, there's also the trade paperback edition of Wolverine: Snikt!.

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