Also this week:

NEW EXILES #5 - The start of a second arc, as the other half of the team - Morph, Cat and Sage - all head off to a sword-and-sorcery world.  And do you know, this isn't bad at all.  Unlike the last storyline, we've got a clearer focus on the characters, some subplots that make sense, decent pacing, and a world with a simple, straightforward theme.  Basically, while the last story was a bit of an unfocussed mess, this one seems to know what it's about.  It's still fairly traditional territory and it's the sort of thing you might have got during the Cross-Time Caper in Excalbur (although with the rather generic Roberto Castro on art).  But it's perfectly fine, and at last I'm getting a sense of where Claremont is going with this version of Kitty Pryde.  B

X-FORCE #3 - A mixed issue.  On the one hand, the plot is developing into something a little more than hack and slash, and it's making an effort to draw on the X-Men's mythos in a way that makes sense.  Come to think of it, putting Bastion with the Purifiers works quite neatly, given that Scott Lobdell always intended the character to have messianic tendencies.  But the tone is still very monotonous and bleak.  The dark art merely gives the impression of a book that takes itself far too seriously.  And there are some real lapses of clarity - the first panel verges on incomprehensibility.  C

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, Exodus takes on Professor X in X-Men: Legacy #210, and the Apocalypse story continues in Ultimate X-Men #93.

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