Holidays are over, it’s back to the normal schedule.

Check two posts down for this week’s episode of House to Astonish, where you’ll also find the link to the podcast’s new Facebook fan page.  And if you’re looking for tonight’s wrestling preview, that’s just below.  (In brief: it looks skippable.)  As for my backlog of chart posts… well, I’m starting to get through them…

Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine #3 – This series isn’t just over the top, it’s completely insane.  The last time Marvel did a Spider-Man/Wolverine miniseries, as I recall, it involved a lot of globetrotting and miscellaneous thugs.  Which isn’t very interesting, but it’s perhaps what you’d expect as the common ground for these two characters.  Jason Aaron, however, is approaching it rather differently, with a series of complete, high-speed lunacy, bouncing between time periods and outrageous big ideas like a pinball.  Each issue has enough material to keep some books going for a year.  The book takes half an issue to race through a died-and-reborn subplot that Joss Whedon stretched out for several months in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  But Aaron and Adam Kubert make it work, because they keep coming back to a relatively clear “what’s going on” throughline, and they’ve nailed the characters’ voices.  It may be ridiculous, but it’s not completely lacking in subtlety; it’s good with the little details that flesh out a scene and allow the book to work at breakneck speed.  Granted, it does seem a little bit odd when the story pauses for a couple of pages for an attempt at actual emotion, but at least it reminds us to care about the lead characters.  Aaron’s good at taking crazy story ideas and giving them a bit of weight without slowing them down, and this is a particularly extreme example.

Hellblazer #271 – The first part of a new arc, and Peter Milligan has still got Shade the Changing Man hanging around.  It’s the sort of thing that could easily slip into cosy nostalgia, but it neatly avoids that trap; Shade’s fairly unsympathetic here, largely because he’s obsessed with trying to recapture his relationship with Kathy, a supporting character from his nineties series, also written by Milligan, who’s been dead for years.  It’s still more a Shade story than a John Constantine story, but it’s a Shade story about the impossibility of turning the clock back.  Even Constantine’s scenes in this issue are closer to surrealism than horror, such as a demented opening sequence with an oracle hairdresser operating out of a memorial in Hyde Park.  Shade may not be acting like he used to, but the style of Milligan’s Shade stories is definitely recognisable here.  An interesting way for Milligan to revisit one of his signature characters, and artists Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini are more than able to carry it.  It looks like we’re actually leading into a 1970s story with art by Simon Bisley in the subsequent issues, rather than keeping Shade around for the rest of the arc, but it’s been good to have him back for a brief reminder.

Joe the Barbarian #7 – The penultimate issue of the miniseries by Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy, and the big draw here has to be Murphy’s spectacular artwork.  I’m going to have to re-read this whole series next month when the final issue comes out, to see what I really think of it.  Obviously the big idea is that Joe is hallucinating and he’s experiencing his journey downstairs to get some sugar as a massive fantasy quest incorporating elements from his world.  The big question is whether we have a reason to care about a story which we know is entirely within the main character’s head.  Morrison seems to suggest that the story isn’t a hallucination so much as an alternative perspective on the world, which is all very in keeping with his views on magic, and I’m keeping an open mind about whether he can pull this off.  In some ways it’s a formal experiment; can Morrison really get an interesting eight-issue miniseries about a teenage boy hallucinating while he goes down a flight of stairs, particularly when those hallucinations are so clearly intended to be a fever-dream version of a deliberately cliched quest story?  And somehow, yes, it is holding my attention – but I’m not altogether sure whether that’s because of the story or the strength of the artwork.

New Mutants #17 – I like the idea of Project Purgatory, a military camp stuck in Limbo.  And there’s some very good stuff in this issue.  In recent years Limbo has tended to be written as just a weird dimension where you get lynched by demons, and Zeb Wells is clearly trying to go back to the days when it had more of a sense of place, so that Magik’s status as its ruler can be a bit more meaningful.  There’s also a great opening sequence with Sam and Dani, very well drawn by Leonard Kirk.  But as the New Mutants get drawn into the story proper, it all starts to get a bit hectic and confused – there’s something very odd going on with the timeline, with “two weeks later” captions that don’t seem to make any sense in the context of the scenes, and frankly, by the end of the issue, I was just a bit lost.

Shadowland: Power Man #2 – Even though this is a four-issue tie-in miniseries for a Daredevil event, it’s pretty clear that Fred Van Lente is really trying to set up a character and supporting cast who could work in an ongoing series.  They’re following this with another mini, and I can only assume the idea is to try and get enough buzz from those two books to launch an ongoing title successfully.  And so far, so good, because the story is neatly establishing the new Power Man as a promising new character.  While he does have some tenuous continuity ties to Luke Cage, the real point is that he fits into the “hero for hire” mould which Cage himself long since vacated, and which remains a nice set-up for a series.  Not that the book is in awe of the original Luke Cage stories – this issue also has a hilarious sequence with dodgy old Power Man villains, and poor old Spear gets perhaps the best line of dialogue I’ve read all year, as he tries to give himself a big Claremont-style introduction.  I’d happily read an ongoing title based on this.

Unwritten #17 – The “Choose Your Own Adventure” issue!  Alright, if we’re being completely honest, it’s more a case of offering alternative perspectives on Lizzie Hexam’s back story – there is an option that leads to the “wrong” ending, but most of the others are multiple routes to the same destination, with varying subplots along the way.  But it works very cleverly; it’s done in landscape format to double the number of available “pages”, and the forced jumping around the issue as a clever way of playing up the artificiality and reminding you of what you’re reading.  Unwritten is all about the power of stories, and this is a particularly neat way of getting across the idea that the same events can be made to fit different narratives.  Lizzie’s character is, literally, all about choosing which narrative she wants to impose on the world around her.  Plus, of course, it’s a very funny pastiche of the choose-your-own-adventure gimmick.  Great fun.

X-23 #1 – Marjorie Liu and Will Conrad launch X-23’s new ongoing series, and what do you know – this one doesn’t pick up on the cliffhanger from the Road to Hell one-shot either!  I wonder what Marvel were thinking, publishing a hype story and not telling us where to get the next chapter?  Anyway, we talked about this at length of the podcast.  The bottom line is that Liu has a good handle on the character of X-23, and some interesting ideas on where to take her.  Promisingly, she spends much of this issue trying to get X-23’s development back on track after the backsliding of her time in X-Force.  The art is pretty good, and it’s very much a character piece rather than a hack and slash comic.  The abandoned cast of New X-Men are used effectively as supporting characters.  The downside is… well, there’s no real plot.  There are a couple of subplot dreams setting up something to happen down the line, presumably tying in to the current Wolverine storyline, but the rest of the issue is just a whole load of scenes trying to re-establish X-23’s character.  We’re getting this a lot on Dark Wolverine too – another book co-written by Liu – and it seems to me that there’s a problem emerging here with two much character introspection and not enough story.  Still, it does look good, and it’s got the right idea of where to go with the character, so there are plenty of positives here.

X-Factor #209 – The team go to Las Vegas looking for Hela (though they still don’t realise who she is), which means Peter David gets to have fun with Longshot breaking the bank and Shatterstar finding himself in a city that feels just like home.  Actually, Shatterstar’s maybe a bit too naive in this story, considering that the character has been around since 1991 and ought to understand the concept of actors by now.  But the casino stuff is great fun, not least because the incongruity of the team wandering around in full costume and nobody commenting on it.  And guest artist Emanuelo Lupacchino hits the right tone with the Vegas scenes, which have plenty of energy and enthusiasm.  There’s also a soap opera subplot with Rahne telling Rictor that he’s the father of her unborn child – this is an odd one, because understanding it requires a working knowledge of X-Force storylines circa “X-Necrosha”, none of which have yet been explained to X-Factor readers.  The recap page at least mentions that Rictor isn’t really the father but doesn’t actually explain the rest of the story, which seems an odd choice.  Still, it’s nice to see her being extricated from the dead end of X-Force, and reintegrated into a book where she belongs.

Welcome back!  Normal service is now resumed.

With two weeks of comics to get through (and more arriving shortly), what I’m planning is to run through the X-books from the last two weeks, in order to bring that up to date.  Anything else of interest, we’ll cover it on Sunday.

And now, comics…

Daken: Dark Wolverine #1 – Officially this is a first issue, but in practice it’s a relaunch of Dark Wolverine.  The title is actually a little unfortunate, since writers Daniel Way and Marjorie Liu are trying to tell a story about Daken attempting to move out of his father’s shadow and become his own man.  In an ideal world, then, he’d probably be dumping the “Dark Wolverine” tag by now… but I guess commercial considerations take priority there.

This is a tie-in to the “Wolverine Goes To Hell” storyline currently running in Wolverine itself, and to be honest, the tie-in bits will only make sense if you’ve read Wolverine #1.  But most of the issue is just the usual Daken schtick – Daken manipulates some people, Daken has sex with some people, Daken thinks about killing some people, Daken actually kills some people, Daken reflects in narrative captions on what an awesome predator he is.  It would be unfair to say he’s  one-dimensional – there’s a bit more to him than that, thanks to his obsession with being in control of his own destiny – but they seem to have settled down to writing him as a rather unappealing nihilist psychopath, whose only positive agenda is to assert his own autonomy at all costs.

In itself, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly gives the writers a struggle to make him a lead.  Daken remains a book which is light on plot and heavy on the musings of the title character, and while he’s got something, I don’t find him compelling enough to carry a book simply by wandering around talking to people.  (The writers may disagree, given that they’re prone to having other characters remark on Daken’s “terrible beauty”.)

The book does have good art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Onofrio Cattacchio, who have nailed the air of infuriating self-satisfied cool that Daken’s evidently meant to have, and who do a sound job throughout the book.  My only real quibble is with the design of Daken’s new costume, which seems a bit too Wolverine-ish for a character who’s supposed to be going his own way – and obscuring the mask in the big unveiling seems a very odd choice.  But for the most part, the art is good stuff.

The character can work, in the right stories – but I think he probably needs more emphasis on plot, and more of a supporting cast to bounce off.  You can’t build a book around a psychopath waxing philosophical unless he’s got some really fascinating things to say.

Franken-Castle #20 – The final chapter of the “Punishment” crossover with Dark Wolverine belatedly sees a couple of interesting ideas emerge.  First, there are parallels between Wolverine trying to save his loathsome son Daken, and the Punisher’s failure to save his own kids.  And second, with more of a meta angle, we have a clash of characters from two generations.  The Punisher dismisses Daken as a rip-off of a genuine legend; Daken sees the Punisher as a fading star desperately clinging on to relevancy after his time has passed.  Considering that the character is currently tied up in something as bizarre and last-ditch as a Frankenstein storyline, it’s hard to argue with Daken’s point.  It’s a weird choice to spend a few pages drawing attention to the characters’ (genuine) inadequacies, and ultimately none of this is really enough to turn “Punishment” into a proper story, as opposed to an overextended fight scene.  The issue also suffers from multiple artists, and the style lurches alarmingly – the two pages by John Lucas are a particularly obvious speedbump, as the story suddenly slips into rushed-looking cartoonish exaggeration for two pages in the middle of a scene.

New Mutants Forever #2 – So far, this mini doesn’t seem to have the energy of Claremont’s X-Men Forever series.  It appears to be more of an attempt to tie up some long-running subplots from the 1980s that were allowed to tail off without getting a proper resolution.  Most obviously, we’ve got the saga of what Selene wanted with Nova Roma – except Nova Roma was never one of the more successful concepts from the 1980s (even the New Mutants letter column acknowledged that the idea hadn’t worked as well as they’d hoped).  There’s also some stuff in here about Warlock’s fear of infecting Cypher with the transmode virus, which was a Very Big Deal Indeed in the late eighties, and really should have got a proper pay-off somewhere along the line.  Judging from the plot of this issue, I suspect I know where Claremont’s heading with it, and I can see how it might work.

However… the series assumes a pretty decent awareness of late-1980s New Mutants continuity, not even bothering to explain why Sunspot and Warlock are away from the rest of the group.  (They were briefly written out so that they could appear in the Fallen Angels miniseries.)  And I’m at something of a loss to understand why the team are fighting the Red Skull, of all people – perhaps Claremont’s trying to do a riff on the old idea of Nazis hiding away in South America, but surely in 2010 that one is decades past its sell-by date?

Wolverine #1 – The series formerly known as Wolverine: Weapon X is relaunched as just plain Wolverine, and kicks off with the aforementioned “Wolverine Goes To Hell” storyline – which will also cross over into Daken and the new X-23 series.  I’ve liked Jason Aaron’s work on this book.  He generally seems to have a good handle on what works in a Wolverine story.  And this story has another strong idea; thanks to magical baddies, Wolverine’s soul gets dragged off to Hell to get punished for his past sins, while his body is running around causing trouble on Earth.  It’s over the top, but still manages to make the character stuff work.  In fact, it’s only been a couple of years since Marc Guggenheim did a storyline about Wolverine visiting the afterlife, but this one seems to have a more solid idea about the character at its heart, so I don’t mind retreading the territory.

What does give me pause is that Aaron seems to be telling a story about Wolverine undergoing religious conversion.  The closing editorial certainly seems to think Aaron’s overall direction is about Wolverine “finding peace” and “finding faith”.  The final issue of Weapon X certainly seemed to be hinting in that direction, and there’s material here to suggest that Aaron is trying to drag Wolverine in the direction of Christianity.  I’ll keep an open mind until we see where this is heading, and I can see some potential in having a “troubled soul” character like Wolverine at least toy with religion, but I can’t honestly say the direction is one that much appeals to me.

Renato Guedes’ art is pretty sound; maybe a little too restrained, but it does pull off a great establishing shot of Hell.  There’s also a rather odd back-up strip with the Silver Samurai battling ninjas amid heavily stylised artwork – something which seems to be there primarily as a backdrop for narrative captions to lay out Aaron’s take on the character.

Wolverine: Road to Hell #1 – Three short stories promoting the launches of Wolverine, Daken, X-23 and X-Force.  (Daken and X-23 have to share theirs.)  As you can probably guess, none of them are unmissable.  The Wolverine story is effectively a deleted scene from Wolverine #1, but it’s quite a good one, and gives some idea of where Aaron’s going with the plot.  The Daken/X-23 thing is a bit mystifying; they’re both looking for Malcolm Colcord, the former director of the Weapon X Project, and then the story ends on a cliffhanger… which isn’t picked up in Daken’s book at all.  Is it in X-23’s?  We don’t seem to be told.  Finally, Rick Remender and Leonardo Manco introduce their new X-Force team, and spend most of the story pushing the entertainment value of Fantomex.  Deadpool looks a bit out of place in this group, and I think they’re going to have trouble with him – as a motormouth character, he tends to dominate every scene he’s in, and it’s interesting that even in this 8-pager, he’s relegated to a subplot.  Still, it’s clear that the new X-Force team isn’t going to have the relentlessly bleak tone of the last one, and that’s a change for the better.

X-Force: Sex and Violence #3 – The filler miniseries wraps up with lots of people fighting one another for an issue.  The series has been a perfectly fine little romp, although I’m inclined to think that two issues would probably have been enough.  But again, after so many issue of X-Force that took the premise deadly seriously, it’s been nice to have a few issues of cheerful nonsense to lighten things up a bit.

X-Men #3 – “Curse of the Mutants” continues, and I’m glad to see that we seem to be getting back to the vampire politics stuff, which was one of the things I thought was more interesting in the prelude.  Having recovered Dracula’s body in some of the tie-in issues, the X-Men put him back together and try to get him on side.  But naturally, Dracula’s not as easy to steer as they would like.

This is basically a straight superheroes versus vampires story, but there are some nice touches to it.  I like the idea that Xarus thinks being a vampire is great, and that he’s giving the X-Men a gift that they simply don’t appreciate yet.  And there’s good use of the relationship between Wolverine and Jubilee, albeit that Gischler has to devote quite a bit of dialogue to re-establishing it for the benefit of newer readers.  There’s a nice cliffhanger, too.  As for the art, Paco Medina is more at home with superheroes than vampires, but Marte Gracia’s colours do a nice job of muting the palette for the stalking sequences.  Above average, I’d say, though the question remains of whether that’s strong enough to convince waverers that they want to buy another X-Men title.

X-Men Forever 2 #7 – Basically an issue of the X-Men and the Starjammers fighting the Morlocks, but Claremont keeps the plates spinning with a couple of subplots, and finally gets to unveil his original idea for Mr Sinister, namely that he’s the creation of a child supervillain.  (Hence the silly name, you see.)  I’m not sure we really needed a whole issue devoted to this fight, but we do get a nice sequence with Sabretooth and his clone, and a strong ending, as Claremont finally pays off something he set up a year ago – we all knew it was coming eventually, but by waiting this long, Claremont makes it a surprise.

X-Men: Smoke and Blood – A “Curse of the Mutants” tie-in one-shot starring the X-Club.  It’s not important to the plot; it’s basically a horror story where the scientists are locked into part of the X-Men’s base with a captive vampire and some of the infected people they’re trying to help.  Gabriel Hernandez Walta is an interesting choice of artist, with atmospheric work that’s a million miles from typical superhero work, and good use of muted colours without losing clarity.  His flashback to the vampire terrorist attack from X-Men #1 certainly looks more freakish than the original version.  As for Si Spurrier’s story, it’s a familiar science-versus-magic thing.  It’s the sort of debate that’s probably best avoided in this context, because it’s just silly to have the rationalist Dr Nemesis denying the existence of magic while fighting a horde of vampires.  The rules of the Marvel Universe skew the debate too far to make it worth having.  (A rationalist in the Marvel Universe would have to accept that magic existed but insist that science could ultimately explain it all in the end.)  In fairness, the scientists do get to win, but the story appears to be going for a “more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy” moral that doesn’t really work in a story that uses magic so unequivocally.