Also this week...

CIVIL WAR: WAR CRIMES - This is one of the extra Civil War projects that was added at the last moment to pad things out when the original book was rescheduled.  Incidentally, given that Marvel claim they pushed Civil War #6 back to January as a favour to retailers - none of whom seem to recall requesting such a thing - it's amusing to see that the scheduling department thought this would be a great week to bang out six Civil War tie-ins and three Spider-Man books (two of which fall into both categories).  I can't begin to imagine who would have requested that.  Anyhow, in this issue, Frank Tieri and Staz Johnson follow up on what the supervillains are doing during the Civil War, other than being drafted into the Thunderbolts.  Some of them are forming an anti-registration army under Hammerhead; Kingpin sees a threat to his domination and acts accordingly.  God knows I've been critical of Frank Tieri's books in the past, but this is actually very good, with a neat premise, a strong plot, and a well-handled ending.  His usual tendency to adolescent humour is left aside here, and the story is immeasurably stronger for it.  Points off for shamelessly shoehorning a pet character, Underworld, into a major role that doesn't seem to suit him, but otherwise, thumbs up.  A

NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI #1 - Worth mentioning, I suppose, because Professor X is one of the lead characters.  Inexplicably, this is billed as a New Avengers book, even though only one Avenger is even in the story, this is a flashback story desperately attempting to show us that, honestly, the Illuminati were terribly important in all sorts of major Marvel events.  This issue, the Kree-Skrull War.  Co-written by Brian Bendis and Brian Reed, it reads a lot more like Reed's work on Ms Marvel.  And that's probably for the best, since Reed's style is much more compatible with the old stories they're playing about with here.  Bendis would be, at best, a horrendous style clash.  There's still a limited amount that can really be done within this framework, since it's clear that nobody wants to mess up the original story too badly, and so we end up with something that feels like  a tacked-on epilogue.  But it's not bad, and at least it gives Jim Cheung something fun to draw.  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, Joss Whedon's final six-part arc gets underway in Astonishing X-Men #19; Mike Carey introduces Pandemic in X-Men #194; Tony Bedard finally packs up and says goodbye in Exiles #89; Omega Red is still running around in Wolverine: Origins #9; and thanks to the miracle of late shipping, there are two X-Men What If? one-shots, focussing on the Age of Apocalypse and Deadly Genesis.

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