Also this week...

SERENITY ROSE #5 - Well, to be honest, this actually came out months ago.  But after months of pestering my store to order me a copy from backlist, I've finally tracked a copy down on... er, an obscure shelf at the back of the store.  Anyhow, there's bound to be a trade paperback out sooner or later, so this is a perfectly good time to remind you all what a great little book this is.  Okay, issue #5 is... a touch preachy.  But it gets away with it, as Serenity is finally given a lecture on why she should lighten up.  Serenity's a weird character - instead of being the typical goth drama queen, she's just so painfully withdrawn that she pretty much does absolutely nothing unless pushed into it.  She really shouldn't work as a lead character, but the book has the charm and humour to get away with five issues where, strictly speaking, very very little happens.  I love this title.  It's goth without the irritating bits.  I can't believe so few people seem to read the book, I really can't.  A

SEVEN SOLDIERS: GUARDIAN #1 - The second Seven Soldiers mini, and as promised, it's also entirely self-contained and entirely different.  Just grounded enough to avoid completely departing into surrealism, this is fantastically imaginative stuff.  Pirates on a subway train - who are apparently common knowledge, and every so often turn up at an unsuspecting station to pillage the commuters.  Genius.  Meanwhile, Jake Jordan is hired as corporate superhero the Manhattan Guardian, figurehead mascot of the Manhattan Guardian newspaper, which literally fights crime.  Gloriously nuts.  A

SPELLBINDERS #1 - Weird high school drama with magic from Mike Carey and Mike Perkins.  The gimmick is that the magic isn't really a secret.  It doesn't quite work - somebody's fallen in love with the mystic significance of the number 7 at some point, and decided that there have to be 7 lead characters.  That means there are way too many undifferentiated characters wandering around, and the cast is too unwieldy to take in.  But the idea is good, and there's a nice closing twist.  And, of course, Marvel deserve some credit for trying it at all, because it's very far from their normal stomping grounds.  B

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art.

Next week, Astonishing X-Men #9 finally makes it to the shelves, over two months late.  Other than that, it's miniseries all the way.  X-23 #4 continues the origin of the surprisingly popular Wolverette.  X-Force: Shatterstar #2 disappears beneath everyone's radar.  X-Men: Age of Apocalypse #5 at least has the decency to be nearly over.  And X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong #4 continues the vital work of getting Jean Grey into place for when the next movie comes out.

The recent Madrox miniseries and the embarrassing six-issue X-Force fiasco both get trade paperbacks.  And if you have a passionate urge to give Marvel more money, why not shell out for variant cover reprints of Astonishing X-Men #7-8, X-23 #2 and X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong #4?

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