Also this week...

OTHERWORLD #1 - Phil Jimenez writes and pencils a twelve-issue miniseries from Vertigo.  It's one of those stories where somebody in the humdrum daily world turns out to be the saviour for a fantasy world and gets swept into the battle there.  In other words, it's not a desperately original idea.  The selling point here is Jimenez's art, which steers clear of a lot of the usual cliches for magic and comes up with something a little more original.  And of course, it's all beautiful to look at, because it's Phil Jimenez.  The story is not so memorable, but it does the job - there's plenty of great things for Jimenez to draw, after all.  B

SECRET WAR #4 - Okay, seriously, what is the point of this?  There's a crossover in Pulse #8 this week which actually isn't bad, but this is just... a bit of a mess.  It's a huge fight scene with a horde of barely distinguished villains (though an appendix does its best to give them some sort of personality).  The more of this stuff I read from him, the more convinced I become that for all his talent, Bendis just isn't very good at writing this sort of thing.  He aims for epic but ends up with confusion.  Pulse actually explains the plot better than Secret War itself.  Hopeless delays have sucked what little momentum the book had, and at this point, it's just a matter of getting the thing out of the way.  C

ULTIMATE SECRET #1 - Introducing Ultimate Captain Marvel, and including the obligatory lecture on Warren Ellis' pet scientific interests.  This version of Captain Marvel seems to be an alien who's set up on earth with a cover identity as a scientist; it's a mildly interesting concept, but he feels rather generic here.  There's a complete break from Ultimate Nightmare, with a completely new cast and set-up, so the three-volume structure seems justified.  McNiven's art is perfectly attractive, but doesn't really blow me away.  And the pacing is disturbingly slow - Nightmare was boring as all hell by the time it reached issue #4, and this issue pretty much promises the same.  Alright so far as it goes, but there's nothing here that really leaps out as being particularly memorable.  B-

Last week's Article 10 is still up at Ninth Art.

Just the two X-books next week - X4 #5 finally wraps up the dismal crossover series, while X-Men Unlimited #8 stars Angel and Beast.  There's also the fourth and final Mystique trade paperback.

If you're wondering what happened to the final chapter of X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, it's slipped by a week.  Which, to be fair, isn't so bad for a six-issue weekly miniseries.

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