Also this week:

BLACK PANTHER #14 - I suppose I'd better cover this in the capsules, as we're now leading into the marriage.  Ludicrously, we have a cover with a whole load of female characters and the caption "Who will be the Bride of the Panther?", as if it were some sort of secret.  Meanwhile, the story continues to try and convince us that, honest, this is a totally organic and sensible pairing rather than a faintly desperate publicity stunt.  This month things descend into glorious self-parody, as Reginald Hudlin assures us that Storm and T'Challa are clearly destined to be together because, see, Storm's grandmother Harriet once met T'Challa's dad!  Why, if she hadn't taken young David to Wakanda with her when she was working for Malcolm X, David would never have been inspired to return to Africa as an adult, so he wouldn't have met Storm's mother!  IT'S DESTINY!  An aide for Malcolm X, for fuck's sake.  And then poor Luke Cage has to say this: "Ororo?  Really?  It was like that? With Malcolm and your dad?  Okay, this is deep."  And you just know Reginald Hudlin really believes that.  So bad it's unintentionally hilarious.   D

STORM #2 - In contrast, this is really quite decent.  Although I don't for the life of me see how it fits with the Marvel Team-Up #100 which, after all, is meant to provide the justification for the wedding.  But we have a nice little swerve with the rival who betrayed Ororo last issue, a good little recap of the death of her parents, and some villains who are starting to develop proper personalities.  It's taking an unusual tack by direct market standards, in that it's all written from Ororo's perspective, which makes T'Challa the romantic male lead - standard practice for Eric Jerome Dickey's novels but much less common in the male-dominated world of superhero comics.  Anyhow, no complaints here.  It's good enough on its own merits to deserve a decent rating despite my antipathy to the overreaching stunt.  B+

X-MEN #184 - The Apocalypse storyline continues, and this is actually quite good.  Milligan's style usually struggles to accommodate straightforward superheroics, and when he tries to write normally, it doesn't usually work for him.  But this is a relative rare example of him playing it dead straight and pulling it off, at least on the level you'd expect of a straight down the line "heroes fight Apocalypse" book.  He's got an interesting angle on Apocalypse, who's having pangs of conscience (perhaps the flipside of Cyclops being affected by him a few years back?), and this version of the villain really works for me.  Points off for inexplicably sending his pet character Bling! on a mission with the X-Men - she's the one with the bumpy head, if you're wondering.  Overall, though, perfectly solid.  B+

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art, and more from me at If Destroyed in the next couple of days.  Honest.

Next week, "Wandering Star" concludes in Uncanny X-Men #471, X-Men: Deadly Genesis #5 turns up a fortnight late, and X-Statix Presents Dead Girl #3 features Dr Strange and a host of dead superheroes.  There's also a trade paperback collection of X-Men: Colossus - Bloodline, but I wouldn't recommend it.

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