Also this week:

EXILES #70 - House of M continues, as the Exiles find themselves re-enacting the Proteus storyline from the 1970s.  It's a nice way to introduce Proteus as the team's new regular villain - and I rather like the idea of somebody from the House of M world escaping before things get put back, which is presumably where we're heading.  On the other hand, I have a sinking feeling that part of the point of this story is to kill off Angel so that Beak has no reason to return home and leave the team.  I hope I'm wrong about that, because I really have no desire at all to see that story.  Surely we've already done Beak's transformation as a member of the Exiles (albeit that the ending didn't really work).  Send the guy home and give him his payoff.  Readers of a nervous disposition may wish to be warned that this issue features truly horrid Scottish accents.  ("Shuir" for "sure"?!)  B

ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #1 - One of four Mark Millar comics this week, and this time it's a reinvention of the Inhumans.  Unfortunately, this is one of those stories that would have benefitted from Millar reining in his characters' smarkiness.  It's a rewrite of the original story where Crystal runs away from Attilan, meets the Torch, and it's love at first sight.  But in this version everyone's too cynical to believe in love at first sight, and Crystal is written as a brat with snappy dialogue whose change of heart in the closing pages comes completely out of nowhere.  For this story to work, it needed to build a credible culture for the Inhumans, but it's just too flip and self-consciously cool to achieve that.  Nice art, though.  B-

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art, and other stuff from me at If Destroyed.  

A ton of X-books next week, but thanks to the wonders of my new format, I don't actually have to reveal them all.  Giant-Size X-Men #4 finally hits the stands, almost two months late.  They'd better have put a ton of effort into those eight original pages.  And - brace yourself for this - NYX #7 is supposed to finally hit the stands, having being originally scheduled for 24 November 2004.  Meanwhile, Daniel Way takes over Wolverine with issue #33, and immediately embarks on a House of M crossover.  Yes, that's three issues of Wolverine in three weeks.

The House of M crossover also continues in New X-Men #19 (and, for that matter, Spider-Man: House of M #4).  A new storyline begins in Cable & Deadpool #20; Nightcrawler #10 continues to revisit Kurt's origins; and X-Men: Kitty Pryde - Shadow & Flame reaches its penultimate issue.  Oh, and there's a trade paperback of Enemy of the State.

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