Also this week:

ARAÑA: THE HEART OF THE SPIDER #1 - Marginally better than the opening arc in Amazing Fantasy, but still nothing to write home about.  Araña isn't a bad comic, exactly, so much as a thoroughly mediocre one, the sort of thing you'd expect to get if you asked a committee to create an adventure comic about a teenage girl.  Marvel's concerted effort to promote this title is laudable, but this is not the book to do it with.  C

JLA: CLASSIFIED #3 - Grant Morrison and Ed McGuinness's storyline wraps up.  This is one of Grant's Silver Age efforts - big ludicrous ideas at maximum volume.  And you don't get much more ludicrous than the DC apes.  Actually, this is the first time I can remember really enjoying an ape story.  Normally when these characters turn up, it feels like it's meant to give the warm fuzzy feelings of nostalgia to hardcore DC fans.  Here, they're just a fantastically bizarre and silly idea, played dead straight.  A-

OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE: WOMEN OF MARVEL 2005 - Because this is the comics industry, and "women" is a theme.  I'm mentioning this for the benefit of completists, since it's got profiles for a bunch of X-characters as well.  Actually, like the Golden Age one, this is quite endearing because of the bizarre selection of characters.  The book ploughs gamely through various major female characters who haven't been covered before, sticks in some of the Runaways, and then goes spiralling off into a world of its own with the unlikely inclusions of Dark Angel and Millie the Model.  Did you know that Millie the Model repelled an alien invasion in Life With Millie #14?  No, me neither.  You learn something every day.  B

WE3 #3 - Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's three issue miniseries about cute cyborg killer animals comes to an end.  The actual story here is very basic and straightforward, but it's been handled absolutely wonderfully.  It's not about complex plotting or bizarre ideas, just taking a simple idea and making the absolute most of it.  Real virtuoso stuff, and one of the real highlights of recent months.  Unmissable.  A+

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

Next week, the Scarlet Witch settles in on Genosha in Excalibur #9.  There's another roster reshuffle in Exiles #59.  Uncanny X-Men catches up on its schedule by shipping two weeks in a row, as issue #455 starts a storyline taking the team back to the Savage Land.  Not really looking forward to that one.  Never liked the Savage Land.

X-Men/Fantastic Four reaches issue #3, which at least means that we'l be more than halfway through.  See, there's a silver lining in every cloud.  X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong continues the rather more promising miniseries.  And Nightcrawler and Kitty Pryde star in X-Men Unlimited #7.

There's also the second trade paperback collection of Chris Claremont's Uncanny run, covering issues #450-454.  They're billing it as Uncanny X-Men: The New Age vol 2, which must be some strange, unusual usage of the word "New" of which I was previously unaware.

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