Also this week:

NEXTWAVE #1 - In which Warren Ellis irks the purists.  No doubt some people will wonder why I like this book when I spend much of my time grumbling about inept continuity.  The short answer is the Nextwave is a comedy book and doesn't have to worry so much about creating a believable world.  It just has to remain true to its warped internal logic, and that's what we get here.  A bunch of C and D-list superheroes go rogue after discovering that Dirk Anger and HATE - a very thinly veiled parody of Nick Fury and SHIELD - have been infiltrated by terrorists.  Again.  So they race off to fight Fin Fang Foom, because that'll be cool.  I have trouble believing there's enough material in this concept to sustain an ongoing series, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  And Anger's ludicrous tough-guy monologue is genius.   A-

WOLVERINE #38 - Oh god, wake me when it's over.  This storyline is now being spun off into an entire ongoing title, Wolverine: Origins, and I can't imagine anything more dreary.  It's just... so... slow.  After three issues, we've finally got around to the point that somebody else was involved in brainwashing Wolverine, and that the Winter Soldier pops up because it makes for a nice crossover with Captain America.  The problem with this whole arc is that Wolverine's supposedly mysterious history has actually been exhaustively documented already, and all we're doing here is tinkering around the edges in ways that don't seem particularly intriguing.  Plus, Daniel Way still can't tell the difference between "tediously cryptic" and "mysteriously tense."  If Marvel think they're going to get a hit series out of this, they're out of their minds.  C

X-MEN: DEADLY GENESIS #3 - I'm starting to wonder whether this series would have benefited from being tightened up a bit.  There's some definite flabbiness in this issue - not a great deal really happens, but characters obligingly wander around waiting for plot revelations to present themselves.  I'm perversely intrigued by Marvel's attitude to this book - even Joe Quesada has openly admitted that the sales were a bit of a disappointment, and they've resorted to revealing plot spoilers to convince people that, honest, it's important!  Of course, that would imply Marvel's no longer believed when they simply say something is important, which ought to give them pause for thought.  Anyhow, it's the middle act of a superhero story, and it's decent but padded.  B

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art.  And If Destroyed has, at last, got some new material.

Next week, it's romance month at Marvel, and the X-books contribute with an unlikely-sounding anthology one-shot, I ♥ Marvel: My Mutant Heart.  New Excalibur #4 begins a new two-part storyline, and Uncanny X-Men #469 starts "Wandering Star."  The Sentinel miniseries reaches issue #4, and X-Men: The End: Men and X-Men #2 continues the final volume of the series.  Plus, the trade paperback of House of M.

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