Also this week:

AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES #2 - Joe Casey and Scott Kolins' retrospective on the early days of the Avengers continues.  I'm enjoying this book a lot more than I expected to.  Casey is taking a strange approach here, largely ignoring the actual stories in favour of filling out the character arcs.  This issue is Captain America coming back from suspended animation, and doing the obligatory culture shock routine, albeit with the 1990s rather than the 1960s.  It's well handled, and Casey throws in the obvious modern plot point that would have been glossed over at the time - who in their right mind would take a man who's been on ice for 50 years and immediately stick him on a superhero team rather than sending him off for rehab?  Meanwhile, poor Iron Man tries to run the Avengers like a nice sensible businessman, and can't quite get Thor to understand why that's necessary.  A much better book than the solicitations made it sound.  A+

BOOKS OF MAGICK: LIFE DURING WARTIME #5 - End of the first arc, although it turns out just to be a prologue leading into the next storyline.  Fascinating.  It is at this point in a new title's existence that I look at the book and ask myself the obvious question: Why am I buying this?  And in the case of Books of Magick, quite honestly, I have no idea.  As with Witches (which I didn't bother with), this seems awfully Vertigo-by-numbers, with the twist being a largely impenetrable near-future war.  It looks like it ought to be deeply meaningful, and I have the nagging feeling that it isn't.  C+

CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 - Another of those relaunches where the book was only cancelled last month, but Marvel just want to draw attention to the new creative team.  Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting are the lucky duo, and they're playing it pretty much straight.  The art is lovely, if perhaps a little too realistic for the sort of story that they're doing here.  The story takes us back to the old standby of the Red Skull trying to get his hands on the Cosmic Cube (again) before lurching off in a genuinely unexpected direction.  A good solid debut.  A-

There's a new Article 10 on Monday at Ninth Art.

Next week, at long last, a really quiet week!  Mystique #21 continues its final storyline before cancellation with issue #24, and Excalibur #7 has more stripmining.  And you know why it's so quiet?  Because NYX, Astonishing X-Men, Rogue and Nightcrawler are all running late...

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