Also this week:

AVENGERS #80 - Chuck Austen brings you the new Captain Britain.  Well, it's not nearly as horrible as his X-Men work, I'll give it that.  In theory, doing a re-run of the original sword/amulet choice, and having the new Captain Britain choose the wrong one, is actually quite a good idea.  On the other hand, the character is utterly annoying.  Still, I've read worse.  C

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #55 - Continuing the ridiculously contrived storyline in which Spider-Man and Dr Octopus fight on the set of a Spider-Man movie produced by Avi Arad.  Self-indulgence doesn't get much more blatant than this, and by all rights this should be utterly abominable.  Surprisingly enough, though, it's really not bad - Mysterio as the movie villain is a nice touch, and most of the focus is staying on the regular characters.  That said, with all of the Dr Octopus material that's been coming out over the last few months, one thing has become worryingly obvious - nobody really has a clear idea what this character is all about.  He's been everything from intelligent schemer to delusional psycho, with the prevailing theme being revenge stories against people he's fought already.  He's a great visual, but boy, writers seem to be struggling to get a grip on him.  Bendis' version is at least suitably creepy, engaging in "conversations" with his tentacles.  B+

WILDCATS VERSION 3.0 #19 - A fight scene?  An issue-long fight scene?  In WildCATS?  What the hell?  It seems we're going into a storyline about Coda assassins, taking us some way back towards the original WildCATS concept.  Given that the book does nothing with the Authority's takeover of America - which is supposed to be the big event in Eye of the Storm books at the moment - I'm tempted to conclude that Casey is keeping his head down and waiting for that plot to go away so that he can get on with the general theme of beating the establishment at their own game.  Anyway, guest art from Pascal Ferry this month, and he does draw a very good fight scene, making the most of the deadpan Agent Orange.  But it's not really what I'm looking for in this book.  B

This week's Article 10 is up at Ninth Art.

Next week, Wolverine/Punisher #1 begins a new miniseries by Peter Milligan.  And the digest version of Sentinel #1-6 finally turns up.

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