Also this week...

CABLE & DEADPOOL #37 - The only other X-book out this week, and it's worth mentioning that the scheduling is actually getting more erratic.  These are the numbers of X-books that were solicited for the next few weeks: 4, 1, 5, 6, 2, 2, 4, 5, 3, zero (!), 4, 6, 2, 1.  How can it possibly make sense to have weeks of six, one and zero?  That means comics are getting buried in deluge weeks when they could have had a relatively free run at the X-Men audience elsewhere in the month.  I just don't get it.  Anyway, back to this week's comics.  Cable & Deadpool is still focussing entirely on Deadpool while it waits to find out what on earth is happening with Cable.  The idea is that Deadpool is trying to get his career back on track by proving his effectiveness, but typically, he's going about it in a way that's just stark raving mad.  This leads, somehow, to an issue where the Rhino shows up to take revenge for that time back in the Gail Simone run when Deadpool shrunk him down and turned him into a keyring.  Now, that was over four years ago, but it's a classic issue.  This one reverses the idea, but doesn't quite reach the heights of the original, and also seems to come out of the blue in terms of the wider plot.  It's still a decent issue, but it has the misfortune to spend every page reminding us of a classic one.  B

LEGION OF MONSTERS: WEREWOLF BY NIGHT - The first in a string of one-shots with Marvel's monster characters.  It's not a team book, and I can only assume they're testing the water to see if there's much interest in these little-used characters.  Mike Carey starts things off with a story about Jack Russell, who starred in Werewolf By Night for a few years in the 1970s.  Carey seems comfortable with the werewolf mythology, as you'd expect from an ex-Vertigo writer, and he takes the more general approach here, rather than focussing on anything especially unique to Russell.  It's not bad, but it doesn't find a compelling angle that would make you want to read more Jack Russell stories.  Greg Land is hopelessly miscast on art - his airbrushed figures are completely at odds with anything remotely resembling horror, no matter how watered down.  It's just too pretty.  The back-up strip is a Frankenstein story by artist Skottie Young, who also takes up writing and colouring.  It's a solid story in its own right, but it's also interesting to see that Young, unlike Land, is capable of shifting his style dramatically for this sort of material.  He's got more range than I'd thought.  B

SHE-HULK #16 - Since it's an extremely quiet week, I might as well flag up that Wolverine guest stars in this book, to help fight the Wendigo.  This is the second part of "Planet Without a Hulk", in which She-Hulk finds herself traipsing around beating up Hulk villains while her cousin is off-world in his own title.  I wasn't thrilled with part 1, which seemed to be taking the book in a much more generic and frankly duller direction.  Fortunately, with this issue, it's clear that the supporting cast haven't been forgotten, and the story even voices the same complaints I had about the previous issue.  ("We had a good thing going at the law firm.  And now you're throwing it all away for this mindless superhero crap!")  That gives me more confidence in the book's general direction, and on that basis, by all means let's have a couple of fun fight scene issues.  Plus, it makes a nice change to have Wolverine just come on and do the old schtick well, without anyone trying to be too clever.  B+

THE SPIRIT #3 - Darwyn Cooke's revival of the legendary Will Eisner character is working much better than I'd expected.  The obvious risk with this book was that Will Eisner's Spirit stories were acclaimed because of Eisner's incredible, ground-breaking storytelling abilities, rather than because of the Spirit himself.  He's a fairly generic hero who served perfectly well as a vehicle for Eisner.  Cooke isn't Eisner, but he's an excellent storyteller in his own right as well, marching to the beat of a different drum from the event-driven, adolescent pseudo-cool of most superhero comics.  And the Spirit turns out to be a good vehicle for Cooke's stories as well, making this book an unexpected success.  A

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, "Primary Infection" concludes in X-Men #196, while New Excalibur #17 completes Chris Claremont's returning two-parter.  Wisdom #3 has a new artist, although whether that's because Trevor Hairsine was too slow or because the book was selling too badly to justify his presence is unclear to me.  And Wolverine #51 will no doubt feature more scenes of Wolverine fighting Sabretooth.

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