Also this week...

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #51 - Back to business as usual, and a story about a creature made up from the combined corpses of 1950s mafiosi which is raised from the dead by a nuclear blast.  I'm sorry, have I wandered into an issue of Marvel Team-Up?  A seriously naff premise, but otherwise in line with usual standards.  B

CAPTAIN AMERICA #11 - Jesus, it gets worse.  "The weather is my mistress, fool, and your lustful hands upon her are the insensitive gropings of a rapist!"  You can't make this dialogue up.  Or at least, in a just world, nobody would.  Meanwhile, Captain America responds to criticism of American foreign policy by calling it "terrorist double-talk", before cheerfully colluding in murder, which is apparently okay, because the villain's a terrorist.  Crap from start to finish, and a total waste of the talent of Jae Lee, who at least wrings some decent visuals out of this mess.  D

FANTASTIC FOUR #67 - Mark Waid plays at misdirection, in a Dr Doom story acting as a prologue to the next arc.  Cute, although it spends much of the story hinting at something which would be an astonishingly bad idea.  It doesn't do it, but it still takes a little bit of the shine off the story when it spends so long suggesting that it's going that way.  Pretty good, though.  A-

FANTASTIC FOUR: UNSTABLE MOLECULES #4 - And we finally get an explanation of how these characters inspired the Fantastic Four despite not really being all that much like them at all.  Clever stuff, but also a really strong story about relationships breaking down.  The appeal of a story like this may be somewhat limited, since it's dependent on a working knowledge of the Fantastic Four and their original context to get the point, but it's been well worth it for all that.  A

GLOBAL FREQUENCY #6 - Ah, Warren Ellis has been watching BBC links.  It's another one act action story, of course, this time based on Le Parkour running.  And, well, it would make a great film.  The problem, for me, is that Le Parkour is impressive primarily as a "did that just happen" gymnastic display; and while comics can depict that, they can never really capture the impact of real human stunt work.  David Lloyd tries his best, but I'm not sure this is a concept which can really work in comics.  Put it on film and you'd have a great fifteen minutes.  B-

HELLBLAZER #182 - A new storyline, and Mike Carey is still firmly in traditional Hellblazer territory - thoroughly nasty things going on in a mundane England.  Arguably Carey is still sticking a little too firmly to the established style, but he does do it very well.  This issues strikes a nice balance by keeping up its self-aware humour without detracting from the story.  B+

PETER PARKER, SPIDER-MAN #54 - The attempt to televise Spider-Man for underground gaming continues, as this month he's forced to fight the Scorpion, and a really crap robot.  I'm still enjoying Zeb Wells' work, and he seems to be improving when it comes to incorporating his sense of humour into a workable storyline.  Nothing classic, but a fun superhero story.  B+

On Monday, the fiftieth Article 10 appears at Ninth Art.

Don't forget to vote in the UK National Comics Awards at their website.  The X-Axis and Ninth Art are both eligible for the website awards.

Next week, the final issue of Hulk / Wolverine, and the beginning of another weekly miniseries - Wolverine: X-Isle.  Sentinel debuts, and the Gus Beezer X-Men one-shot is also due out.  Plus, Ultimate X-Men #31 and X-Men Unlimited #45.  The adaptation of X-Men 2 is out as well, but I won't be reviewing that, since the film isn't out yet.

back | continue