Also this week:

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE #13 - As the book enters a second year, and Christos Gage fully takes over the writing, we get a rather bold move: the introduction of a completely new class of trainees.  And we're talking the dregs of the Marvel Universe here.  Annex?  Prodigy, of the Slingers?  Batwing, from Untold Tales of Spider-Man?  Gorilla Girl, for heaven's sake?  This really is the Dork Squad, and giving them their own book is a surprising move.  But in fact, this is a lovely little opening issue, with Gage showing why he's so good at offbeat team books, and Steve Uy with some nicely understated art.  It's a self-contained story, which is always nice.  And it even finally spells out whether the trainees are there by choice and what happens to them when they graduate - something which hadn't been made entirely clear in the first year.  Gage's StormWatch PHD was an underrated little gem, and on the strength of this issue, I have high expectations from his run on this title.  A

ECHO #3 - There's something a little odd about seeing a fairly conventional superhero story done in the style of Terry Moore, but it does work.  The trick is simply to use the relatively standard thriller elements as background, and focus on the human side of it.  Now, I'd have to admit that it's the execution that appeals to me about this book, rather than the plot (which, frankly, I can see lumbering towards me from some distance).  But Moore does it well enough that the familiarity of the plot isn't really the problem that it would be in lesser hands.  A-

There's more from me at If Destroyed, and apparently if you haven't read the Ninth Art stuff by now, you're too late.

Next week, Aron Coleite takes over as writer on Ultimate X-Men with issue #94.  Wolverine: Origins celebrates 25 issues, by finishing off the Deadpool arc and reprinting the whole of New Mutants #98.  X-Factor #31 sees riots in Mutant Town.  And X-Men: Divided We Stand #2 is the second of two short story collections.

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