It’s a quiet week for the X-books, for a change.  Just the three of them – Cable, Wolverine: Weapon X and one of those inexplicable Wolverine one-shots that keeps on coming for some reason.  (And seriously, what’s the deal with those things?  How many Wolverine fill-ins could anyone actually want in their collection?)  Fortunately, there’s a fair amount of other stuff out too, so…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight #32 – This is the first part of “Twilight”, the storyline where we find out who the eponymous villain actually is.  Or at least, that’s the theory.  This is clearly meant to be a major storyline for the series, and they’ve brought in a big name writer accordingly, in Brad Meltzer.  A weirder aspect is Dark Horse’s promotional campaign, which has already given away the ending – something that would have been a major surprise for a number of reasons.  I suppose the idea was that lapsed readers would go out and buy the arc to find out how said revelation could possibly work.  Anyway, after the last arc, Buffy has got full-blown superpowers, and Twilight is her arch-enemy in a supervillain mask.  The Buffy cast being basically geeks, much of this first issue is given over to them testing her powers against Superman cliches, which is actually quite funny.  More generally, I’m not entirely sold on the direction here.  It certainly looks as if we’re going to get some sort of riff on superhero cliches, but I don’t quite see why that fits in this particular series.  I admit that I’m curious to see where all this can be heading, but I suspect that’s more to do with the spoilers than with in this issue (which, by the way, still hasn’t actually reached the big revelation).  As an issue in its own right, it’s fine – Meltzer has the voices of the characters down, and there’s a cute Kitty Pryde gag – but the “comic book” stuff can’t help but feel a little out of place and forced.

Cable #23 – Well, we’re in the home straight now.  Just two issues to go before Cable and Hope get back to the present and the book ends.  The set-up of this arc is that they’ve finally got hold of a time machine that can go backwards, but it’s a bit erratic and they’re bouncing back and forth either side of the present as they try and zero in on it.  So we get scenes of them in the increasing recent past, interspersed with scenes in the decreasingly distant future as they make their way back through the last two years of stories, culminating this issue with a coda to the first arc.  Structurally, it’s quite clever – while it’s been a bit of a slog to get to this point, I do like the way that the pace has picked up, and the past/future stuff gives the feel of a series collapsing in on itself.  And there’s a lovely scene based on the idea that Hope has literally no clue how to drive.  (“Straight?  What’s straight on this circle thing?”)  On the other hand, the New York of 2044 was a fairly generic dystopia the first time round, and that hasn’t really changed; that’s fine so long as it’s just a backdrop for Cable and Hope, but bringing back Sophie Pettit from the first arc doesn’t really have the weight it should.  The art’s a bit bland too, though it gets the point across, and there are some nicely atmospheric panels during the car chase.  Still, this arc has some momentum, which is the main thing that Cable has been missing over the last couple of years.

Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love #4 – Much as I love Shawn McManus’ art, and it’s excellent here, this series isn’t really clicking for me.  The basic gimmick – Cinderella as a Fabletown secret agent – kind of gets lost, because the character really doesn’t have that much in common with the fairytale Cinderella, or at least that all gets overshadowed by the James Bond riff.  Then we have a plot based on the harem members from the Arab fables spontaneously developing radical feminism after a brief trip to New York.  There’s an interesting idea in there somewhere; you could do something about cross-cultural influences and so forth.  But it’s played on such a simplistic level that it really falls flat; it comes across as one of those clumsy stories where everyone deep down really wants to be American and realises it when they set foot in Manhattan, and that doesn’t work.

Criminal: The Sinners #4 – Criminal is one of those books which is terribly difficult to review because it’s consistently excellent, but it’s consistently excellent in the same way that all the previous issues were consistently excellent.  And that makes it hard to find anything in particular to seize on in an individual issue, which in turn means that you end up giving the same list of the book’s good qualities every month – that it’s a superlative noir book told with great economy and style from two creators who know how to make every element count.

Doom Patrol #7 – Um… well, this is a story where a bunch of characters from previous incarnations of the Doom Patrol, some of them completely unrelated, show up in subplots, apparently because Keith Giffen is about to embark on some grand project to try and tie together all the versions of the Doom Patrol.  Which is fine if you’re a Doom Patrol continuity wonk, and, like I said last month, to some extent the team’s history is such a mess that it really needs a bit of explaining.  But actually trying to make that the centre of your book and lay claim to all the conflicting Doom Patrols as a single heritage is tricky; there’s a risk of trying to find a common thread that simply isn’t there, or complicating the premise unnecessarily.  It’s not like there was ever a grand plan behind the disparate versions of the Doom Patrol, beyond keeping a trademarked name alive, and this issue doesn’t really convince me that the subject offers fertile ground.  This issue also has the final Metal Men back-up strip, which seems to be racing to reach some sort of conclusion, and isn’t entirely satisfactory.  A sixteen-panel opening page is a bit of a giveaway, though in fairness they’re buying space for a couple of splash pages later on, and the creators are good enough to pull off this sort of highly condensed grid page.  It’s fine as a story in its own right, but it’s not a finale (and, to be honest, doesn’t really read like it was intended to be – why introduce a new supporting character now?).

Echo #19 – In this issue, guns.  Also, rainfall.  After the big infodump a couple of issues back, the series has returned its focus to the cast being hunted down by mad and dangerous people, and also by slightly less mad but still quite dangerous people.  But scenes like this show why Terry Moore is a cut above most storytellers; he has the subtlety of body language and pacing to make almost anything visually interesting, even if it’s just four silent panels of somebody drawing a gun and then walking into a convenience store.  It’s the mastery of detail that makes this sort of sequence feel like a good use of space; lesser artists can’t pull this stuff off.  And this is one of the reasons why I like Echo despite its admittedly rather daft conspiracy plot; it’s a monthly reminder of what can be done in an 18-page monthly thriller comic.

The Great Ten #4 – Tony Bedard and Scott McDaniel have set themselves a difficult task with the format for this series about the DC Universe’s official Chinese superheroes.  There’s an over-reaching storyline about China coming under attack from guys claiming to be Chinese gods, and the Great Ten being sent to stop them.  But each issue is also meant to be focussed on a seperate member of the team – some of them loyal party functionaries, some of them basically decent types trying to do their job and keep out of politics, a couple of potential dissidents.  Presumably the idea is that the series should give us a whole range of modern Chinese characters and (like its villains) explore the variety that exists below the Communist veneer.  But it also means that you get issues like this, where the Immortal Man-in-Darkness relates his origin story – or, really, just explains his gimmick – and then fires a few missiles at a baddie.  Mind you, it does look beautiful.

Siege #2 – There are all sorts of problems with this comic.  Norman Osborn is hopelessly undermotivated.  The plot point about him invading Asgard without authority seems to have been completely dropped, so apparently we’re meant to believe that everybody was too embarrassed to try and countermand his orders.  And while the Dark Avengers managed to take out Thor last issue, this time they are sorely vexed by Maria Hill, because this time the plot requires them to lose.  Actually, that pretty much sums up my problem with Brian Bendis’ plotting; he needs the plot to get from A to B, and that’s fine, but he tends to gloss over the internal logic needed to get there.  (For example, if the plot calls for Maria to rescue Thor from the Dark Avengers, at least have her outwit them or take advantage of their internal squabbling or something.  Don’t just have her charge them with a bazooka.) That said, though, this is something of a guilty pleasure.  The art’s great.  Writing Asgardians keeps Bendis away from his usual dialogue tics.  I’m glad that the story seems to be focussing on the (real) Avengers and Nick Fury rather than bringing in the entire Marvel Universe.  And the bit with Sentry and Ares is certainly unexpected, even if it’s one of the less successful moments art-wise, and even if I hope it doesn’t stick.  There are some really good moments in this book; I just wish the structure holding them together was a bit stronger.

Sweet Tooth #6 – Beginning a second storyline, as Gus settles in to his new “home”, and flashbacks finally fill us in on the background of Tommy Jeppard – a washed-up ice hockey player who finds himself cast in the role of antihero in Sweet Tooth‘s post-apocalypse because there’s literally nobody else left.  There’s a fairly obvious direction for this character to go in (especially since it’s a pretty safe bet that he has to be reunited with Gus at some point), but that’s fine; this book works on atmosphere and on having believable characters in extraordinary circumstances, not because it’s particularly unpredictable.  Jeff Lemire’s sketchy, slightly twisted artwork seems a little less at home in the pre-apocalypse flashback sequences, but it’s perfect for the main story with its battered and damaged characters.

Wolverine: Savage – This would be the random Wolverine one-shot I mentioned at the start.  Just in case anyone hasn’t figured out yet that these are essentially Generic Wolverine, the thoroughly generic cover should help to bring the point home.  It’s by J Scott Campbell, but in fairness to him, I’d guess this is probably what Marvel asked for.  The actual story is an all-ages piece by Ryan Dunlavey and Richard Elson, in which Wolverine fights giant monsters to help rescue a missing sushi chef.  Which is certainly different.  And actually, it makes a pleasant change for one of these stories to just be a tongue-in-cheek superhero piece, since most of them seem to go for noir.  Perhaps because it isn’t trying to hard to fit an established genre, this has a lot more individuality.  Elson does a rather hefty Wolverine, but there’s some nice detail in there, and a particularly nice fish-chopping sequence.  Colourist Veronica Gandini gives the book a nice, bright look too.  It’s still ultimately a Wolverine fill-in story, but anyone mourning the demise of Wolverine: First Class might enjoy this.

Wolverine: Weapon X #10 – A self-contained issue, as Wolverine tries to figure out whether Melita Garner is technically his girlfriend or not, and gets advice from the likes of Jubilee and Rogue on the issue.  It’s a fun story, simply because it gets to spend an issue having Wolverine try to dodge the topic.  I’m not so sold on CP Smith’s art.  This guy’s been around for a while, and his sickly colours and stylised panels are certainly inventive.  I’m just not altogether sure they add to the story.  His characters are rather stiff, and some of his tricksier panels are just distracting.  It’s most notable with the scene at Mariko’s memorial, which suddenly throws in a panel of Melita looking sultry in extreme mock-Warhol close-up, completely at odds with the rest of the scene and with her dialogue in that panel.  To be fair, a scene with Melita and Emma Frost meeting in a corridor at night is better (and it’s the only version of Utopia I’ve seen that actually makes it feel like something recently unearthed from the bottom of the ocean).  But I still find his art more intriguing than enjoyable.

It’s another of those weeks when Marvel flood the shelves with X-books.  There are no fewer than seven of them this week, which is surely excessive by any standards.  I really don’t understand why after all these years Marvel seem to find it so difficult to ship things on a sensible schedule.  But there you go.

Check out this week’s podcast, a couple of posts down, to hear Al and me discussing Joe the Barbarian, New Avengers and the Blackest Night issue of Starman.  But in the meantime, here’s a ton of X-books and a few other titles that I’ve got around to reading so far.

Batman & Robin #7 – Cameron Stewart takes over on art, as Batman comes to London looking for… well, that’s a plot twist in the final pages.  But Grant Morrison isn’t writing London at all, so much as an imagined Silver Age version of London full of localised gimmick villains – evil pearly kings at war with coal-themed baddies from the North and so forth.  It could easily be excruciating, but Morrison and Cameron Stewart are the sort of people who can carry this off, and make it feel like a sort of quirky extension of Silver Age logic.  That said, it’s still a bit of a jarring gear shift when we reach the final pages and it becomes apparent that this is actually important to Morrison’s wider storyline; there’s an awkward change of tone and a confusing segment with Batwoman that leaves me wondering whether this is a reference to some story I haven’t read, or an intentional piece of obscurity, or just a mess.  A fun read, but mainly on the strength of the first half before it starts trying to tell a story.

Chew #8 – Ah, nested prologues.  There’s nothing like a needlessly convoluted structure.  This is another clever issue with the usual mix of absurdity with genuine plot tension (and the obligatory dash of gross-out humour which isn’t allowed to overwhelm the story).  Now, that said… is it just me, or is it straining credibility that Chow made it all the way to the island without knowing about something that was (a) a major news story, and (b) directly relevant to the reason he was going there in the first place?  I know it’s Chew and it’s not exactly social realism, but it gets away with that sort of thing because it sticks to a coherent if warped internal logic.  So plot holes like that still cause me a bit of difficulty.  It’s a minor point, though; and how can you not like a comic with a story built around a chicken in a helmet?

Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh #4 – The conclusion of Mark Waid and Minck Oosterveer’s second miniseries about Catherine Allingham, the metaphysical detective trying to solve the mystery of what happens when we die.  Presumably some of you will be getting the trade, so I won’t spoil the premise of this series (revealed in issue #3).  Suffice to say it’s outlandishly convoluted and audaciously weird.  I’m also not altogether sure it makes sense – if I’m understanding it right, it seemed to involve some sort of time loop, and I don’t quite see how that squares with this issue.   But in a strange way, it’s the sort of concept that actually benefits from not entirely making sense.  Since Unknown is all about things on the verge of the characters’ understanding, it actually works to have stories that you can’t quite get a grip on.  It’s the sort of thing that could backfire spectacularly, but by keeping a firm grip on the lead characters and anchoring everything to that, the series holds it together.

Wolverine: Origins #44 – Wolverine and Cloak try to break obscure Defenders villain Ruby Thursday out of prison for a whole issue.  As I often say about this title, it’s at its weakest when it gets hung up on the clumsy arc plot, and so it’s usually more entertaining when it turns its attention to something relatively straightforward like a jailbreak.  Doug Braithwaite is doing great art on this series, with a lovely solid feel to it.  And there are moments in this story that I quite liked – such as the governor’s sinking feeling when he realises that he’s cornered Wolverine and now he’s actually going to have to do someting about it.  On the other hand, the stuff with Romulus is stupid as ever, and I’m really not sure that this book (or Matt Fraction, for that matter) gets Cloak as a character at all.

Wolverine: Wendigo – This is actually a reprint from the Monsters, Myths and Marvels digital comic.  And billing it a Wolverine comic is contentious to say the least.  It’s actually a story by Frank Tieri and Paul Gulacy about the Quebecois cops interviewing the survivors after a bunch of documentary makers get ripped apart by the Wendigo.  Wolverine does indeed appear in the story, but for a grand total of four panels out of 22 pages.  To be fair, the back-up story, also reprinted from the digital service, is of almost equal length and does feature Wolverine heavily.  But still, this is dodgy advertising.  (I note, by the way, that Marvel have solicited a Hope one-shot which, given the story description, certainly sounds like it’s a reprint of the recent “Hope” back-up strips – but without mentioning that anywhere in the solicitation at all.  This strikes me as extremely dubious practice, though I suppose it might be argued that if you own the stories already, you’ll recognise it as a reprint from the solicitation text.)  Anyhow… the lead story is a perfectly acceptable monster strip, and the art’s quite good, but it doesn’t go anywhere you wouldn’t expect.  The back-up is one of those “villain hypnotises hero so he fights another hero” stories, guest starring Thor, and again, it’s perfectly okay without really offering anything you haven’t seen before.

X-Babies #4 – Isn’t that cover just adorable?  Anyway, this is the final part of the four-issue miniseries dusting off the old Star characters, and I remain thoroughly confused by what it was trying to say about them.  The basic idea is that the X-Babies have been “replaced” by infuriatingly cutesy, adorable versions, and so have the Star characters.  Which is fine, except… it’s the cutesy, hateable version of the Star characters that actually resembles the original comics, and not the “real” versions that the X-Babies rescue.  Granted, the Star comics weren’t very good – many of them were shameless knock-offs of existing all-ages titles from other publishers – but I don’t quite understand why you’d want to spend an entire miniseries telling us that, over twenty years after the line was cancelled.  I just don’t get it.

X-Factor #201 – The best X-book of the week by a mile.  The over-long time travel storyline is behind us, but this is effectively a continuation, picking up on Layla’s remaining subplots and on the previous appearance of a future Dr Doom.  Granted, it’s not Peter David’s subtlest work – the previous issue did a better job of making Reed’s motivations obscure, and this time he just comes across as a villainous impostor.  But with the cast reunited, we’ve got a great team dynamic here.  Bing Cansino’s art is perhaps a little bland at times, but his characters have expression and he gets the story across, which are the key things.  A quality team book.

X-Force #23 – The Necrosha crossover rumbles onwards.  This issue, X-Force fight people in conditions of low light.  There’s a subplot with Hela that I quite liked, but other than that, it’s just a bit formulaic.  It’s perhaps the same problem that I’ve had with some other stories by Kyle and Yost.  They’ve gone so over the top with the threat that I just don’t care any more.  Clayton Crain, to give him his due, does some rather nice atmospheric pictures of gothic buildings in Genosha – I don’t remember that being a particular style for Genosha, but they’re nice pictures, at least.  But mainly, it’s just ugly, emaciated-looking characters in boring murk.  Mostly rubbish.

X-Men Forever #16 – Nightcrawler and Rogue head south to Mississippi, and it looks like we’re going to get Chris Claremont’s version of the “What’s the link between Nightcrawler and Mystique?” story.  Or at least, something like it.  The plotting’s a bit ropey – if it’s Rogue you’re worried about, why set out to lure a different member of the team entirely?  But I like Graham Nolan’s art, which fits the style set for the book by Tom Grummett, albeit that his characters look a little overdramatic when they’re arguing.  And the story is solid Claremont, with an effective cliffhanger.

X-Men Legacy #232 – Officially another Necrosha tie-in, but this story about Proteus returning on Muir Isle looks suspiciously as though it’s a completely freestanding idea which Carey has hitched to the crossover by using Destiny in a role that could have been filled adequately by Blindfold alone.  Actually, if that is what happened, it was probably a smart move to chuck in the tie-in – if you’re going to do two “back from the dead” stories, hey, link them.  Now, the continuity here is a bit of a mess.  The recap page says Proteus reappeared on Muir Isle because he was “extinguished there” – but he wasn’t, he was killed in Edinburgh at the other end of the country.  Besides which, Proteus was already brought back to live during “House of M”, and went off to join the Exiles.  I suppose you could say that’s not the real Proteus, but wouldn’t that open a can of worms for Clint Barton, who was reanimated in the same way?  Leave that aside, though, and this is a perfectly acceptable story of a bunch of X-Men – in fact, a very trad-feeling X-Men team – fighting a rarely seen baddie.  Carey’s done better, but this is fine for what it is.

Once again, after a busy weekend, I reach Sunday evening and find myself with a pile of books I haven’t read yet.  (And as will be fairly obvious, they include most of the non-Marvel books I bought this week.)  But such is life.  Let’s bash through the X-books and a couple of others regardless…

Amazing Spider-Man #618 – Is there actually any unifying theme to this “Gauntlet” stuff other than doing a string of stories in a row featuring old Spider-Man villains?  Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  This is the start of a Mysterio story by Dan Slott and Marcos Martin, so you know it’s going to be well written and beautifully drawn.  Martin in particular is doing really exceptional work on this series.  Now, Mysterio was originally a gimmick villain based on sixties-era special effects, and given the march of CGI, he can easily come across as terribly dated, much like the Circus of Crime.  But Slott’s found a decent angle for him here: Mysterio helping mobsters to fake their own deaths (or, possibly, faking their return from the grave).  It may not be a revelatory comic, but it’s precisely what I’m looking for in a Spider-Man book, and extremely well done.

Dark Avengers #13 – Notionally a “Siege” crossover, but it’s actually an issue banging on about the Sentry’s back story.  Apparently he might be Jesus or something.  Or maybe not.  Um.  It’s really a bit of a mess.  But to be honest, the real problem here is that it’s trying to delve into the psyche of the Sentry, and the Sentry’s psyche isn’t very convincing, and never has been.  It’s just too contrived.

Dark Wolverine #82 – Another “Siege” crossover, and this one actually does cover the Siege story from Daken’s perspective.  The story seems to be pushing the idea that this is the big pay-off where everything is going to go wrong for Norman Osborn, and Daken is waiting to take advantage of it all.  Fair enough – for a while now, the book’s been pushing the idea that Daken’s got longer-range plans in mind.  And this is a pretty enjoyable issue.  There’s not much plot to it – it’s just the Siege from Daken’s point of view – but the interaction among Norman’s oddball band is entertaining, and I like Giuseppe Camuncoli’s art a lot.  The ending is certainly a surprise, but maybe too much of a surprise – it defies belief that such a major plot point would happen in a minor tie-in book, so it’s almost too obvious that it’s going to be an illusion or something.  But yeah, good issue.

Joe the Barbarian #1 – Grant Morrison returns to Vertigo with a new eight-issue miniseries.  This is a set-up issue, and to be honest, it’s all pretty familiar stuff – kid is bullied in real world, escapes from real world problems with toys, toys come to life, adventure.  You know the schtick.  Actually, at times the story openly acknowledges that these are stock elements, so there may be more to it when we get further into the series.  But for the moment, it’s basically one of those stories.  The real selling point on this first issue is Sean Murphy’s art.  Not only does he have a wonderful eye for detail and an ability to set a scene in a single panel, but for the most part Morrison gets out of the way and lets him do it.  Even with the standard Vertigo palate of orange and beige – and to be fair, the scenes with the toys are more colourful than that – this is worth getting just to gaze at.

Thunderbolts #140 – One half suspects that Jeff Parker may be treading water here waiting for “Dark Reign” to end so that the title can move into its next phase.  For the last couple of issues, he’s been using his favourite guest stars the Agents of Atlas so that the two teams can fight, as is traditional in these circumstances.  So, yes, perfectly okay.  But the book really comes together in the last couple pages, which are just a brilliantly executed sequence.  I’d explain it further, but that’d be a bit too spoiler-y.  Suffice to say the book sets up something earlier in the issue and then casually pays it off in a really clever way when you’re not expecting it.  It’s my favourite scene of the week by a mile.

Uncanny X-Men #520 – “Nation X” continues, as three of the X-Men team up with Fantomex to fight a monster in the sewers, while Magneto somehow manages to get a great big pillar built under the X-Men’s island without anybody noticing.  Not really sure how that works.   Since Scott’s now saying that they can’t go back to San Francisco while Norman Osborn is still around, I think it’s pretty safe to say they’ll be back there in the spring, so this whole island thing is looking like a bit of a detour.  (Then again, perhaps the idea is that Magneto sets up shop on the island.  Or maybe it’s going to be the new Atlantis.)  It’s an okay issue; there’s quite a good scene with Scott and Magneto, and otherwise there’s some acceptable fighting, even if Wolverine’s sense of smell is being pushed in a way that would have seemed stupidly over the top during the Silver Age.  Art is from Greg Land, but it’s actually one of his better efforts – though he still seems utterly flummoxed by the idea that women can have facial expressions beyond “grinning” and “sultry.”

Wolverine: Weapon X #9 – The concluding part of “Insane in the Brain”, although as it turns out the story sets up Dr Rottwell as a recurring villain.  I’m not sure I’d want to see him that often – this storyline has been a great change of pace, but it would get wearing after a while.  That said, there’s certainly something compelling about Rot as a sort of low-rent maniac whose powers happen to let him punch above his weight.  And the whole thing is so cheerfully absurd that the over-the-top hyperviolence comes across as black comedy rather than as outright silliness.  Even so, Aaron’s managed to keep that balanced with a really firm grip on writing a famliar Wolverine.  It’s been a strange storyline, but I think it’s worked well.

Look below, loyal readers, for this week’s podcast, and also for Al’s appeal to save S.W.O.R.D..  Well, Al’s appeal for you to help somebody else’s appeal to save S.W.O.R.D..  Good book.

Anyway, I may have some unread books still in my pile, but it’s Sunday night and time to run through the books I have read…

Amazing Spider-Man #617 – We talked about this on the podcast.  It’s a self-contained issue written by Joe Kelly, focussing on the Rhino.  It’s also part of this “Gauntlet” storyline, although so far that’s really just a slow build in the background.  The basic idea is that there’s a new cyborg Rhino around, and for some reason he wants to fight the original Rhino to earn the name.  But the original Rhino has retired and just wants to be left in peace.  It’s flawed – the new Rhino is a sketchy character whose motivations might politely be described as arbitary – but nonetheless it works, because Kelly has a great take on the original Rhino as a peaceful retired villain who just wants to be left alone.  Good art by Max Fiumara, and there’s also a nice back-up strip fleshing out the Rhino’s reformation.

Black Widow: Deadly Origin #3 – This may be a Paul Cornell miniseries, but it’s very much one for the continuity freaks.  To be fair, he’s trying to sort out Natasha’s convoluted continuity by drawing all the disparate strands together into a single coherent interpretation of the character, and that’s fair enough in theory.  But it makes for a rather haphazard story, and the central nanotech plot device is terribly implausible.  I’m not wild about Tom Raney’s art on this issue either, though the flashback scenes by John Paul Leon are great.  I have to wonder whether there’s much point in doing this sort of story in modern Marvel.  Ten to twenty years ago, if they’d done a series like this, it would at least have redefined the character in a way that would have been applied by other writers going forward.  In 2010, I work on the assumption that most stories will just be ignored by the next writer, which makes continuity unscrambling a thankless task at best.  Besides, I’m frankly not that interested in the minutiae of the Black Widow’s back story; wouldn’t it have been quicker just to sweep most of it under the carpet, rather than sift through it on the page?

Dark X-Men #3 – This week’s other, much better Paul Cornell book.  Despite the name, this is basically a Nate Grey miniseries, and it’s turning out to be surprisingly good.  Like every other Marvel hero these days, Nate fights the Dark Avengers, and amazingly, it turns out to be quite entertaining.  Meanwhile, Norman Osborn’s reluctant ersatz X-Men try to figure out whether they can really be bothered getting involved.  Unlike the overly fussy Black Widow story, this is just a high-energy romp taking advantage of the characters’ over-the-top nature.  And there’s great work on the art by Leonrard Kirk, who goes for the big, bold approach that something like this requires.

Nation X #2 – Another anthology of short stories with peripheral X-Men characters.  Theoretically the linking theme is meant to be the X-Men’s relocation to the island “nation” of Utopia, but actually, only one of the stories is really interested in that – a Jubilee story by C B Cebulski, Jim McCann, Mike Choi and Sonia Oback, which gets some decent material out of the depowered mutant watching from the shore and feeling isolated.  John Barber and David Lopez do a fun piece with Martha Johanssen, of all people – yes, the brain in the jar – which could have been set anywhere, but bounces along nicely.  Tim Fish’s Northstar story is a visit from his boyfriend, but it’s really just the old “we live in different worlds” schtick – done well enough, but nothing new.  And Becky Cloonan turns in a Gambit short which is surprisingly keen to tie in to the character’s current continuity.  It’s really the familiar idea of Gambit brooding over whether he deserves to be with the X-Men, but hey, he’s Gambit, and that’s what he does.  An above average issue, and if Marvel are going to keep churning out these X-Men anthologies, it’s good to see that at least they’re being used as a vehicle to include stories with more of an indie sensibility.

Psylocke #3 – This is another of those “re-stating the character” minis.  And to be fair, Psylocke probably needs one.  She’s become hopelessly confused over the years, and to his credit, Chris Yost is trying to cut through the morass of continuity to focus on what defines her now.  Actually, this series is doing a lot of the right things in theory.  It’s zeroed in on a relatively simple villain from her back story in Matsu’o Tsurayaba, the crimelord who was involved in screwing up her identity in the first place.  And it’s got a story which is actually about Psylocke’s character: she goes after him for revenge because she’s looking for closure, she ends up playing the hero and protecting him from somebody else, and she wonders why she’s doing all this.  All fundamentally sound, albeit that the plot’s a bit contrived.  The big problem so far is that Psylocke herself is a character badly damaged by years of chronic misuse, and thus far she remains rather hard to get a grip on.  It’s tough to identify with her.  Mind you, her ill-defined character is precisely what Yost is writing about, so perhaps everything will fall into place with next month’s concluding chapter.  The other problem is the art, which is way too busy and confused.  In fairness, it’s got a lot of energy, but it doesn’t read very well.

S.W.O.R.D. #3 – Henry Gyrich has seized control of the organisation, Abigail Brand is on her way out, and it’s up to the Beast to sort things out.  And dare I say it, there are plot problems here – if Beast’s a guest of Abigail, and Abigail’s out of power, why is he being allowed to wander around unsupervised?  But leaving that aside, it’s another good issue.  Unit gives us his origin story, which is interesting; Death’s Head is in it again; and the art is growing on me, though Hank still looks like a donkey.  Unfortunately, the series looks like it may not be long for this world.

Uncanny X-Men: First Class #7 – The conclusion of the “Knights of Hykon” storyline, and by this point I’m really confused about who the audience are meant to be.  The Knights themselves are a good solid story for new readers – credible bad guys, with a decent motivation, and they get beaten in a reasonably clever way.  But then there’s also an attempt to tie the whole thing into the Phoenix storyline, and I’d have thought that if you were aiming for new readers, you’d want to steer well clear of that whole quagmire.  The basic idea is that the Knights are peripherally responsible for the sun flares in Phoenix’s origin story, and so they’re indirectly to blame for Jean becoming Phoenix.  Scott blames them for messing up his beloved; Jean is a bit put out that he thinks about it that way.  Now, this isn’t a bad idea in theory.  But First Class is a continuity-implant series set somewhere among the late-70s Uncanny X-Men stories.  And this doesn’t feel like the sort of story you can do as a continuity implant, because the tensions in question were eventually dealt with properly in Uncanny itself, so First Class is setting up a storyline that it logically can’t finish.  I’m a bit confused about that.  Still, leaving that aside, this is a basic but enjoyable piece of traditional superheroics.

Unwritten #9 – The concluding part of “Inside Man”, as everything in the jail builds to the obligatory climax.  In some ways Unwritten is the sort of book that’s most interesting when it’s dealing slowly with its ideas rather than doing the big plot resolutions, but it also knows better than to become a purely cerebral and theoretical exercise in metafiction.  This is a good read, and Carey’s done a good job making the pay-off unexpected.  Tommy Taylor is a fairly transparent Harry Potter stand-in; the story plays off the tension of taking the elements of his mythos and putting them in a plot for which they’re wholly unsuited.  But Unwritten makes that tension dramatic rather than merely gimmicky, and that’s what makes it a superior comic.

X-Men Forever #15 – This issue, we catch up with Storm, who you might recall turned out to be a baddie a few months ago.  Since we last saw her, she’s usurped the throne of Wakanda.  X-Men Forever is theoretically meant to be the stories that Chris Claremont would have told if he hadn’t left the X-Men in 1991, but I seriously doubt that he’d have taken the character in this direction.  For all that Marvel protested otherwise, the short-lived childhood romance between Storm and the Black Panther was an obscure footnote in X-Men history until a couple of years back when Marvel decided to retroactively declare them lifelong lovers, but it’s a central element of this story.  Still, the quality of the stories is more important than whether the book strictly adheres to its gimmick, and Claremont is back on form here after the rather shaky “Black Magik” arc, while Tom Grummett’s artwork is excellent throughout.

X-Men Origins: Cyclops – One of those odd stories that’s kind of following continuity and kind of isn’t.  So we’ve got the bit where Scott and Alex parachute from the burning plane, but not the bit where he uses his powers to break their fall.  We’ve got a framing scene lifted from an early issue of X-Men (the one where Xavier shows Cerebro to Scott for the first time), but a complete dumping of Mr Sinister and the Living Diamond.  And we’ve got a re-write of Scott’s first meeting with Magneto, designed to let him confront Magneto alone.  The object of all this seems to be to strip out irrelevant junk from Scott’s history, and retroactively position him as the future leader who’ll take his own line rather than meekly following Xavier.  If you don’t mind the total disregard for established continuity – and to be honest, many of the changes are for the better, at least if you have Scott’s current role in mind – it’s actually not bad, and Jesse Delperdang’s art is good, clear, strong work.  But readers who know Scott’s background already are unlikely to find anything particularly revelatory here.