And in the week when News International cancelled the News of the World, we ask – what’s the betting that they relaunch it in September with a new creative team?  (Dark News of the World #1, perhaps.)

There’s a veritable torrent of X-books and other new releases this week, so I’ll come back later to X-23 #12 (the conclusion of the Jubilee arc) and some of the other issue #1s.  That leaves…

Fear Itself #4 – For the first time, I think I actually preferred this issue to Flashpoint, though it’s close.  At long last the series gives a clear and coherent explanation of the plot, so now we know what’s supposed to be at stake and why.  The Serpent is Odin’s long-lost brother, erased from history, who wants to dethrone Odin.  He’s empowered by fear.  The point of all the random stuff going on in other books is to spread fear on Earth so that he’ll get stronger and he can take on Odin.  And Odin plans to cut off the Serpent’s power by destroying Earth himself.

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“Prelude to Schism”

Writer: Paul Jenkins
Artists: Roberto de la Torre, Andrea Mutti, Will Conrad, Clay Mann, Jay Leisten & Seth Mann
Colourists: Lee Loughridge with Chris Sotomayor
Letterer: Rob Steen
Editor: Nick Lowe

We’ve all seen plenty of bad comics.  But far rarer is the truly inexplicable comic.  The one where, no matter how you twist and turn it, you just can’t figure how anyone could have thought it was going to work.  Prelude to Schism is a book that doesn’t work in concept or in execution.

“Schism” itself is the X-books’ upcoming summer crossover.  They’ve already told us that it shakes up the line and sees the X-Men splitting into two groups, one led by Wolverine, the other still following Cyclops. (Which accounts for two monthly titles.  What happens in the others, heaven only knows.)  It’s obviously a big deal for the line, and they’re promoting it heavily – so you might expect that Prelude to Schism would be some sort of lead-in to the big event.  A prelude, as it were, to “Schism”.

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If you’ve listened to this week’s podcast (just one post below), you’ll know that the last two weeks weren’t exactly replete with notable new releases.  And while I skipped the X-Axis last week, it’s been a fairly quiet period for the X-books too, with just six books in two weeks.  Unless you count Namor, which I don’t.  I’m starting to get a vague sense that everyone is killing time right now, waiting for the end of Flashpoint, the end of Fear Itself, or the start of Schism – delete as applicable.

Still, here’s some stuff that came out in the last two weeks:

Flashpoint: Reverse Flash #1 – Er… yes.  This is a one-shot by Scott Kolins and Joel Gomez (not, as the cover claims, a three-issue miniseries), which I rather foolishly assumed might in some way be important to the plot of Flashpoint, what with the Reverse Flash being the main villain and all.  Silly me.  What it actually contains is a recap of the Reverse Flash’s back story – not a direct copy of Geoff Johns’ recent story from Flash, but certainly covering similar ground.  It’s tempting to say that the problem here is the odd decision to hire artist Scott Kolins as a writer, and there’s no doubt that Johns got the same basic idea across far more effectively and charmingly in his story.  But then, it’s not like the editors gave Kolins much to work with – if the finished product is anything to go by, the remit here was “Recap the plot.”  Joel Gomez’s art is patchy – bits of it look rushed, and there’s a blockiness that doesn’t really work for the Flash, but then there are also a couple of nicely rendered panels and some sweet material near the end with Barry Allen as a child.  Still, not a good comic.

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