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THIS WEEK:
Astonishing X-Men
Cable & Deadpool
District X
Exiles
New X-Men
Ultimate X-Men
Uncanny X-Men
Wolverine
X-Men
X-Men Unlimited
The rest (1)
The rest (2)
The rest (3)

NIGHTCRAWLER was another horrendous misfire from the 2004 launch wave.  It's also a strangely misconceived book anyway.  It's so desperate to come up with its own identity that it's completely lost sight of the appeal of the X-books, or the appeal of its lead character.  Instead, Nightcrawler finds himself as a mystic detective, battling demons and meeting ghosts.  Convinced that the book merely needed retooling, Marvel pulled it from the shelves for a few months.  Then they started it up again, completely unchanged, and with no publicity.  How that was supposed to help is anybody's guess.  The book had a small following, but it's simply not what people are looking for from a Nightcrawler series - if, for that matter, anyone is really looking for a solo series about such a classic team player.

Reviews: Nightcrawler #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | #11 | #12

NYX actually managed to finish in 2005, having taken a risible two years to publish seven issues.  X-23's wave of popularity helped the final issues see a small sales boost, but overall the book is a write-off.  It's clearly the opening arc for a planned longer storyline, and has no real value on its own.  Redesignating it as a miniseries, over a year down the line, is fooling nobody.  Just an embarrassment from start to finish.

Reviews: NYX #6 | #7

ORORO: BEFORE THE STORM is a strange little comic, presumably created with one eye on the digest market, in which Little Ororo fights mad servants of Apocalypse in Cairo.  It's serviceable enough, and actually quite good fun in its way.  Carlo Barberi's art is the main selling point, elevating what would otherwise be a rather formulaic script.  But I can't for the life of me imagine who Marvel thought would be interested in such a comic.

Reviews: Ororo: Before the Storm #1 | #2 | #3 | #4

ROGUE's solo series got axed with issue #12 as well, completing a clean sweep of failure for the 2004 launches.  Once again, it's hard to see what the point of this book was, beyond a vague and clearly unfounded suspicion that it might sell some comics.  2005 saw the Blindspot arc by Tony Bedard and Karl Moline, which involved Rogue getting new powers from Sunfire.  Still nobody cared.  Again, this really wasn't such a bad comic in its own right, but there was absolutely no demand for such a thing.  Since the only purpose in launching it was to leech off that perceived demand for a quick buck, one can only hope Marvel have realised just how badly they misread the market with this wave of launches, and the work that needs to be done to fix the damage that they hadn't even noticed was there.

Reviews: Rogue #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | #11 | #12

SENTINEL returns for a follow-up miniseries over a year after it was cancelled, which might be leaving it a bit late.  The book did well in digest format, but by the time the digest of this story appears in spring 2006, you have to wonder who'll care.  Still, with the original Sentinel series ending in mid-storyline, it's nice to see Sean McKeever get a chance to go back and finish it off properly.  A charming little book, and one that I'd always hoped would do better.

Reviews: Sentinel #1

SON OF M is another Decimation miniseires, this time following a de-powered Quicksilver.  So, a whole series of Quicksilver being depressed and not running, then.  It sounds a tough sell, but the first issue was a good start, with Pietro adjusting badly to being normal for the first time in his life, and calling in his in-laws from the Inhumans.  Presumably the idea is that he wants to get his hands on the Terrigen Mists.  Six issues sounds a bit excessive, but there's clearly something to this book.

Reviews: Son of M #1

ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE spilled into 2005 by virtue of being horribly, horribly late.  It was indeed a tribute to the power of modern technology.  Once upon a time, writers had to be at their desks in order to phone it in.  Now, Warren Ellis can phone it in on the move.  A truly trite and boring little series.

Reviews: Ultimate Nightmare #4 | #5

ULTIMATE WOLVERINE VS HULK is only just under way, and features the Hulk tearing Wolverine in half with his powers of ultra-violence.  It is silly, excessive, and downright ridiculous.  But then, it's Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk and nobody buys a comic with a title like that to see a thoughtful discussion of the merits of Kierkegaard.  Despite the big name non-comics writer - by this point, something to be highly sceptical about, given the standard of work some of them are producing - this looks like it could be great fun if it can keep up the pace for the whole series.

Reviews: Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk #1

ULTIMATE X-MEN / FANTASTIC FOUR is the first half of a needlessly confusing miniseries.  The second half is called Ultimate Fantastic Four / X-Men.  If you can think of a good reason to name a two-part miniseries in such an inane fashion, then send in your resume to Marvel at once, because they're clearly in the market for people like you.  The actual story is a good old-fashioned superhero crossover and really very enjoyable in its way.  You'd have thought it would make sense just to run it in Ultimate X-Men, which is presently on hiatus between creative teams, but apparently that's not the way Marvel think.

Reviews: Ultimate X-Men / Fantastic Four

WEAPON X: DAYS OF FUTURE NOW was a seriously weird miniseries serving as an epilogue of sorts to Frank Tieri's Weapon X series.  Despite being a follow-up to a title cancelled for low sales some months before, Days of Future Now consistently outsold the parent title.  I've no idea why that should be so, but it certainly represents some sort of victory for Tieri and his public campaign to be allowed to write this series.  As for the story, it follows Wolverine and Weapon X years into the future, leading to a strange time paradox ending which doesn't really work.  A strange experiment, though, and certainly a book which did something unexpected with the premise.

Reviews: Weapon X: Days of Future Now #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5

Included here for the sake of completeness rather than because it's actually worth mentioning, WHAT IF?: WOLVERINE was the X-books' contribution to the December What If? one-shots.  It's by Daniel Way and it's crap.  Basically, it's "What if Wolverine had lived during the Prohibition and had the origin of the Punisher?"  The answer is "He would have been the Punisher, only during the Prohibition."  Pointless beyond belief.

Reviews: What If?: Wolverine

WOLVERINE: SOULTAKER was the first of this year's Akira Yoshida miniseires set in Japan.  Wolverine visits Tokyo, and stands politely on the sidelines while Yoshida gets on with a piece of pseudo-mythology that he evidently finds much more interesting.  The story is completely forgettable, but the art from Shin Nagasawa is distinctive and often very good.  Not good enough to make the story worth picking up, though.

Reviews: Wolverine: Soultaker #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5

WOLVERINE: THE END is another late-running miniseries that scraped into the start of 2005.  A thoroughly abominable series which has been rightly struck from my memory, my day is slightly the worse even for writing this short paragraph about it.  Not only was it poorly told, but the story was so far removed from anything that one could possibly want to see in a Wolverine: The End miniseries that it's genuinely hard to imagine what they were thinking.

Reviews: Wolverine: The End #6