Also this week:

GENERATION M #2 - Journalist Sally Floyd continues meeting de-powered mutants, and there's a serial killer storyline in the background.  By this point it's pretty clear that the characters shown on the covers aren't actually going to do anything more than make a prominent cameo.  This issue, it's Jubilee, who is bizarrely misused in a way that suggests writer Paul Jenkins originally had somebody else in mind altogether.  Apparently Floyd has known Jubilee for four years, thanks to her involvement in liberal action groups.  Er... what?  Jubilee's never even lived in New York City.  That's just crazily wrong.  Stacy X also puts in an appearance, as one of the unfortunates who lost their powers but kept their looks.  As you might expect, the prostitution business is not going well for her post M-Day.  It's a much more effective scene.  Overall, though, I'm worried that this series can't seem to make up its mind what it wants to be - serial killer story?  Series of vignettes about ex-mutants?  It feels like two different ideas fighting for space.  B

SPIDER-WOMAN: ORIGIN #1 - Does what it says on the tin.  It's a straight re-telling of Spider-Woman's origin, as per the established history.  I've never liked her back story, which is as horrendously convoluted as anything the X-books have ever come up with.  It's full of clutter - Wundagore Mountain, a token role for the Jackal, that sort of thing - which never really seem to bear on anything the character says or does.  The fact that a five-issue miniseries is necessary simply to explain her existing continuity is a pretty damning indictment it.  That said, though, co-writers Bendis and Reed manage to wring the first act into a surprisingly effective story, so perhaps they're going to win me round.  It doesn't read very much like a Bendis comic - it generally doesn't have his trademark dialogue tics, for one thing - but it's a surprisingly solid rendition of some dodgy source material.  B

There's also X-Men: Deadly Genesis #2, but I don't have a copy of that yet, so we'll cover it later.

Last week's Article 10 is still up at Ninth Art.  And there's more from me at If Destroyed. 

No X-Axis next week, which is New Year's Day.  Instead, look out for the X-Axis Review of the Year, which is going up in the first few days of 2006.

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