Also this week...

AMBUSH BUG #1 - I was going to review this in full, but I suspect it's best left to people more familiar with DC's output.  That's not to say it's inaccessible; Ambush Bug is basically Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming making fun of the excessive seriousness of today's DC Universe, just as it always was, and anyone with a passing familiarity with the genre will get the thrust.  But there's also a lot of throwaway jokes for the DC faithful and I strongly suspect that if you don't have a working knowledge of the plot of Identity Crisis, there's a fair amount going over your head.  Still quite good fun, though, even coming at it without that knowledge.  B+

ANGEL: REVELATIONS #3 - This is a mixed series.  The story seems like a merely serviceable boarding school affair, with a superhero origin nailed onto the side.  And Warren's apparent obliviousness to the world's most obvious gay crush is hard to credit.  But Adam Pollina's remarkable artwork really lifts the book, especially now that he's able to make full use of Warren's wings for some wonderfully exaggerated compositions, and practically justifies a purchase by itself.  Great to look at, but the writing can't quite keep up.  B+

DAN DARE #7 - The finale of Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine's miniseries, coming soon to a collected edition near you.  Ennis has always had a romantic streak in amongst his viciousness and black comedy, but it's unusual to see him playing it up quite so strongly as he has here.  The series is practically a love letter to Dan Dare and the traditional qualities he stands for - and a lament that these are now seen as quaint and outmoded, rather than eternal and essential.  Quite a conservative book in many ways, but it commits to a vaguely unfashionable ideology and makes it work.  The generic bad guys drag it down, I think, but there's a lot to like in this series.  B+

LIBERTY COMICS #1 - This is a fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which kind of makes it review-proof.  But leaving that aside, it's a generally decent mix.  Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's Boys piece is little more than a "give us the money" pitch, but Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal throws in a nice piece about intimidating the press, and Darwyn Cooke takes the theme even more loosely with his own story about a cursed book (i.e., something that actually would need to be censored).  Mark Millar and John Paul Leon seem not to have noticed the theme, and produce an uncharacteristically downbeat piece about a retired suburban Dracula, perfect for the four-page length.  Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier throw in some lectures about the history of censorship (it's all bad), which is fairly amusing if a little obvious.  Overall, though, decent package.  Give the nice lawyers your money.  A

SHE-HULK #31 - This is the crossover with X-Factor, and as you'd expect, it's basically the build-up to the fight from She-Hulk's perspective.  Much of Peter David's run on She-Hulk has involved her sulking and acting irrationally, and this is no exception.  It's used as a device to justify a fight scene which the story practically admits is gratuitous - possibly a neat idea in theory, but it's a little too contrived to work, and it doesn't make for a very sympathetic She-Hulk, who's required to act unreasonably.  This run hasn't quite clicked for me, so far, and there's no change here.  B-

ULTIMATE X-MEN #96 - The "Banshee" storyline continues, and predictably enough, it's building to half the X-Men fighting the other half.  Somewhere along the line, the whole plot about Alpha Flight and Northstar seems to have fallen by the wayside - so unless that bit was a set-up for "Ultimatum", I'm just a bit confused about the way this story's been put together.  There's a more interesting subplot with Jean Grey, with the idea that she refuses to face up to the implications of being so powerful that the rest of the team are rendered superfluous.  But overall, this storyline feels like a bit of a mess, right now.  C+

There's more from me at If Destroyed, and apparently the Ninth Art archive is going back online at some point...

Next week, X-Men: Odd Men Out, a one-shot featuring two unpublished stories by the late Dave Cockrum; Wolverine: Origins #27, with the second part of Daken's origin story; X-Men: First Class #14, guest starring Machine Man; and Wolverine #67, the second part of Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's "Old Man Logan" arc.  There's also a look back at five hundred issues of Uncanny in this month's Marvel Spotlight.

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