Also this week, Bruce Jones' weekly Wolverine: X-Isle miniseries continues.

As with some of Jones' Hulk stories, the strategy here seems to be deliberately enigmatic weirdness.  But while it was fairly successful at building a warped conspiracy story in that title, it doesn't quite work here.  It's all a little too disjointed, and there's a slight feel of surrealism by numbers.

Worse, I have the sinking feeling that this is heading towards an "it was all a dream" ending - there's the passing-out sequence that segued into the island at the end of the previous issue, and that's reinforced here by the island bar containing carnival music and a scene with the barman that re-enacts the sideshow booth sequences in previous issues.  (The barman is the same guy who was manning one of the booths last issue.  The glasses behind him shatter because somebody's playing his game and throwing balls at them.)

The nature of these puzzle-box stories is that you can only really review them sensibly at the end when it becomes apparent whether it's all an intricate set-up to a clever conclusion, or just a mess.  If this is going to work, though, it's going to turn on character insight.  Last issue suggested that Jones' grasp of the character is slightly but significantly off.  This is slightly better, but then he doesn't have all that much to react to this time round.

The art's pretty good, though.  Jorge Lucas has the character down, and gives the island a degree of credibility that the story doesn't otherwise contain.

I'm still reserving judgment until it becomes clearer where all this is heading, but for the moment I remain sceptical.

Rating: B-

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