It’s fair to say that after a succession of almosts (Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2, Iron Man, and Superman Returns if you’re feeling charitable), we’re still waiting for the first truly perfect superhero movie of the modern era. The hype, marketing campaign, trailers and early word-of-mouth surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight - already something of a groundbreaker in that, a la James Bond, it’s the first superhero movie not to name its lead in the title - suggested that finally, we might just be about to get it.

Sadly, we haven’t. The Dark Knight is a superb film, make no mistake about it - but it’s still a film that features enough flaws to dispel any use of phrases like “greatest ever”. Reviewing it as a comic book movie in particular - rather than a movie in general - places it under even harsher scrutiny, as it barely seems to qualify as part of the genre at all. Certainly, I can’t think of another superhero film in recent years where the titular character was not only sidelined by his supporting cast (hell, that’s fairly par-for-the-course as it is) but was actually the weak link.

Indeed, leaving his name out of the title was perhaps a more shrewd move than first seemed - because The Dark Knight isn’t really a Batman film at all. Rather, it’s the quite excellent story of a villain called the Joker bringing chaos to the city of, and destroying the life of, an heroic District Attorney named Harvey Dent and his lawman accomplice Jim Gordon, which just happens to include a guy in a silly costume with a stupid rasping voice getting in the way every few minutes. If that sounds harsh, it’s simply that Batman feels like a passenger in his own film - and Christian Bale, for all the positive attributes to his performance, should have had that voice toned down by someone. And, while his costume as a whole is an improvement on Begins, that mask still looks ridiculous.

The other negative elements of the film are, to be honest, largely based around plot elements and turns that I can’t really talk about without badly ruining the film. The character journey undertaken by one particular figure has been kept largely under wraps in a pre-publicity campaign that was already quite brilliantly constructed around the Joker before Heath Ledger’s death threw the character into even sharper focus - and to say too much about it here, both in the excellence and the missteps, would surely hamper enjoyment with too much advance knowledge.

What we can at least talk about, however, is the Joker, as his role in proceedings is one of instigator, not reactor, so there’s nothing in the way of character change or growth to spoil. He weaves in and out of the film, causing quite deliberate chaos wherever he glances, and is an absolutely mesmerising creation. There’s almost certainly a hint of oversentimentality among those who have called for a posthumous Oscar for Ledger (he’s bloody good, but it’s not an Oscar-style performance by any stretch of the imagination; he gave one of those in Brokeback Mountain) but there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the Joker is one of the all-time great cinema villains, and the film utterly belongs to him. From the first moment he saunters onscreen and performs a “magic trick” that you’ll never forget, to the multiple-choice stories of how he got his scars (a neat nod to The Killing Joke), and the sight of him fiddling with a bomb detonator while dressed as a nurse before calmly skipping away, just about every scene he has is an instant classic, and most will leave you laughing while simultaneously horrified. Flitting between unflappable charm and demented mayhem, Ledger takes a brilliantly-conceived character and turns him into an absolute force of nature. The portrayal of the character may differ more significantly from the comics than any previous version, but no matter - this is the definitive Joker, and Ledger will surely prove irreplaceable.

The structure, story beats and even character notes (particularly Alfred, who in Michael Caine’s hands has gone from being Bruce’s moral conscience to someone who practically pushes him into his role) feel misjudged at times, but what can’t be denied is that in terms of its dialogue and thematic intelligence, this is one of the strongest scripts that a simple superhero movie has ever seen. While perhaps overwrought in places, it nevertheless dares to philosophise rather than reducing the world to black-and-white, and never patronises its audience with cheap or simplistic soundbites. It’s as well, really, because much of the action is formulaic - despite a quite spectacular truck sequence that you’ve probably already seen from trailers - and it’s in the quieter moments (or any featuring you-know-who) that the film excels, despite getting bogged down early on in an unnecessarily lengthy sequence in Hong Kong (one that somewhat matches the “Tibetan ninja” snooze-fest of Begins). That said, for all the grumbling about the apparently cynical toy-selling motives for the Batpod, an applause-worthy in-film reason is given for its existence, and as it zooms in and out of traffic in some intense chase sequences, it makes a refreshing change from the Miller-esque “Tumbler”.

But it’s the cast, really, that define the film. Despite never really convincing in the Batsuit, Bale remains the best Bruce Wayne there’s been, and Caine and Morgan Freeman (the latter given a suprising amount to do) are as reliably solid as ever. Maggie Gyllenhaal is an improvement on Katie Holmes, so it’s a shame that her character has less definition than in the first film - and her importance is weighed by what happens to her rather than what she does. But Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent has the temerity to almost wrestle control of the film from Ledger - it sounds cheesy to say it given the pre-publicity tagline, but he makes you believe in Harvey Dent. A character that’s almost too whiter-than-white, you can nevertheless empathise more with his desire to clean up the city, and do it right, than you can with the plight of Wayne himself. It’s true that he doesn’t quite cope as well with the inevitable angst as he does when playing the square-jawed hero, but he still leaves you walking away with the feeling that The Dark Knight has used up Batman’s two best characters in one fell swoop. And then there’s Gary Oldman, making Jim Gordon as brilliant as he did in Begins, and making you wish he could have his own film as well - and visually, he remains perhaps the most utterly perfect page-to-screen translation of a character yet.

Some will be surprised that there’s anything negative to say about the film at all; but it’s a simple fact that when you reach the highest peaks of excellence yet attained by your genre - and The Dark Knight certainly does that on occasion - the disappointing aspects will frustrate more by comparison. While the film is so far ahead of stuff like Fantastic Four or X-Men 3 that it’s not even funny, it’s still a flawed masterpiece. We’re still waiting for comic book movies to get their Citizen Kane, but The Dark Knight makes an admirable attempt to reach for worthiness when, with the box office already guaranteed, there was nothing to prove. Ledger, meanwhile, leaves a legacy that at once both honours him, and frustrates at the thought of the A-list career to which this performance would surely have propelled him.

As if the last year hasn’t driven the point home enough, Uncanny X-Men #500 will immediately remind you that it’s a very good time to be an X-Men fan. The writing team of Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction have brought with them their unbridled enthusiasm for the X-Men characters, and you can feel it bursting off every page. With the new satus quo now firmly established, the relocated X-Men feel like they’re enterting a new era, with a new mandate to move towards the future that the ast few years have left them unsure even existed.

The sense of gravitas that anniversary issues were afforded in the past returns with #500, as Magneto makes a brilliant, classically-inspired appearance as an evil super-villain with a dastardly plot to destroy the X-Men - but all is not as it seems, as Magneto’s facade actually disguises something far more in keeping with his current situation as the unintentional architect of the Mutant race’s downfall.

While Brubaker’s run has been mildly disappointing - hampered,nitially by the attempt to make his run a self-contained, 12-issue story, adding Fraction into the dynamic has clearly re-invigorated the writing side of things. Dodson’s artwork is great to look at (wisely, he’s given the action scenes) and even Greg Land almost manages to keep up despite his particular brand of artwork being fairly unpalettable - there are still some moments where the tracing and posing get a bit much, but largely due to the strength of the writing, and the expert tempering of any tonal shift in art, the book manages to survive unscathed. The last time the franchise looked this promising was during Morrison’s and Whedon’s early issues, but this time, tone of the book seems substantially less knowing and ironic, it pushes forword while respecting the past, rather than winking at it.

In short, Uncanny #500 is a fantastic new start and a fantastic, mostly self-contained anniversary issue featuring probably the most enjoyably old-school Magneto Vs. X-Men clash in almost a decade. There’s almost nothing to complain about. If Ellis’ clinical, acerbic take on the team didn’t enthuse you, then good luck - Uncanny X-Men might just be back to try and reclaim its crown as the line’s flagship title.

Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

The scene : An office at Marvel, some time in 1995.

“Hey, I’ve got a great idea for a new series!”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“The Green Goblin!”

“Oh… no, seriously. Just no. For starters, Norman and Harry Osborn are both dead…”

“I know, but…”

“… and even if they weren’t, you just can’t sell a solo series on the name of a major villain. If it didn’t work for the Joker, what makes you think it’s going to work for us?”

“No, hear me out… this Goblin won’t be an Osborn. He’ll be… a good guy!”

“You what?”

“Yeah, seriously! Here’s the idea, right. We have this kid, fairly decent sort but maybe mixed up with a few hoodlums through no choice of his own. One day, he’s trying to escape from them and somehow stumbles across Harry Osborn’s secret lair! He does the whole accidentally-falling-into-chemicals thing…”

“What’s the excuse this time?”

“Oh, he gets frightened by a rat.”

“Hm. Nice one.”

“Thanks. Anyway, so yeah, he takes a chemical bath, and then puts on the Goblin costume to try and escape from the bad guys. Lo and behold, he’s suddenly flying around the sky, cackling maniacally, but trying to be a sort of anti-hero-vigilante guy at the same time!”

“Hmmm… so he wants to be a hero, but everyone thinks he’s a villain because he happens to look just like an extremely famous super-villain?”

“Exactly!”

“I like it. It has shades of the whole misunderstood-hero thing… you know, the one that used to be a major theme in Spider-Man until it got pretty much forgotten about except for by the people who are going to reset continuity in 2008…”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Anyway, got any ideas for who this punk kid should be? He’s got to have some links to the past, right?”

“Ah, that’s easy. He’s Phil Urich, nephew of Daredevil’s Ben and an intern at the Bugle to boot!”

“Okay, so that’s another of the Parker boxes ticked. Oh, and we should have him call Urich ‘Uncle Ben’ a few times to boot, eh? Really hammer the point home.”

“You got it. He can do that inbetween all the hip young street slang we’re having him say - what with this being 1995 and all, we’re really cutting edge and down with the ‘kids’.”

“Yes, I particularly like the line about how his ‘heart starts rocking like an old Slash guitar solo’. Quality stuff. So where do you see the series going?”

“Well, the first issue won’t be great. It’s a bit of a mess, quite rooted in cliche, with some pretty shoddy dialogue. But it’ll turn some aspects of superhero-origin convention on their head neatly, and despite his lack of a way with words, Phil will come to be quite an appealing character. He’s the sort of guy our audience should be able to empathise with, and his lack of confidence and slightly loser personality will contrast with his brash mania when he’s in the Goblin outfit…”

“… again, shades of the Parker, there.”

“Exactly! And hey, did you see that Jim Carrey movie that came out last year? Based on the Dark Horse comic? It’ll be a bit like that, as well!”

“Brilliant. So where do we go from there?”

“Well, he’ll get to fight the Rhino, and the Hobgoblin… and we’ll have Daredevil show up later, what with him being an Urich and all. Oh, and you’ll like this - Scarlet Spider!”

“Lovely.”

“Yeah. But while those one-shots will work fairly well for the first half of the run, and we create an interesting potential arch-nemesis called Angel Face in a quite good issue drawn by Darick Robertson, it’ll fail to get a grasp on anything like a solid, longer storyarc or underlying continuity. There’ll be a pretty lame Onslaught tie-in, and it’ll really suffer in the last few issues because we’ll lose Scott McDaniel’s solid and dynamic artwork and replace him with some guy called Josh Hood, who might just be one of the worst pencillers ever to work in the industry.”

“Hmm. So will anyone still be buying it by this point?”

“It’ll have a slightly loyal fanbase thanks to the enjoyment factor of the early issues, and Tom deFalco’s quite good at building up his characters like that - but even they’ll be put off by the artwork and lack of any real story, and eventually we’ll just can it at issue #13. But don’t worry, Tom will rescue Phil, just like he does with every other failed Marvel experiment of the ’90s, in something called Spider-Girl.”

“Okay, sounds great! That should tie in nicely with our bringing Norman back in a year or so and thus negating the entire point of the character, anyway. If you could leave the document in the file marked “Interesting But Failed Experiments Of The ’90s That Will Be Worth A Look If You Can Find ‘Em Cheap In Back Issue Bins, But Not Really Worth Getting Excited Over”, and we’ll get started on it immediately. Now, about this Ben Reilly fellow…”

Moon Knight is one of Marvel’s more low-profile titles, powering on despite the exit of “name” author Charlie Huston as writer. The title’s noir-ish tone places it alongside books like Daredevil, but the graphic violence suggests it might actually be more at home in the MAX line of titles where it could really cut loose. Whatever its place in Marvel’s repertoire, it’s managed to get to 20 issues, and that’s already a fairly respectable distance for such a low-key ongoing to travel.

This issue is a stand-alone story that spotlights Moon Knight’s old foe Jack Russell, Werewolf by Night, and an underground fighting ring that exploits his Werewolf powers to provide a super-powered alternative to illegal gamblers. Naturally, Moon Knight is on hand to bring things down the only way he knows how - with a number of heavy beatings.

There doesn’t appear to be much time given to any specific ongoing plot thread in this issue - the story takes place largely in flashback to 1994, and only makes a brief attempt to tie in with Moon Knight’s current status quo, in which he has quit as the avatar of Khonshu and decided to cease killing his enemies. While the general theme of the flashback ties in with that decision, it’s not likely to convince any regular readers that it’s an essential chapter in the story. 

Luckily, it’s not aimed at regular readers. Deodato’s artwork is fantastically atmospheric and his fight scenes brilliantly technical. A back-up story reprints Moon Knight’s first, 2-issue appearance in the pages of Werewolf by Night, adding a reasonable $1 onto the issue price as a result. Between a stand-alone story, a classic, hefty-sized reprint and an appearance from one of Marvel’s hotter artists, it’s clearly a package designed to bring in a few new readers to the series in-between arcs.

In that regard, it’s certainly a success, since it appealed to me and I’m not a Moon Knight fan - the problem, if anything, is that I’m not convinced I want to read the next issue after this. The framing sequence doesn’t adequately explain how the flashback ties in with the ongoing plot, and as a result I don’t feel compelled to pick up the next issue and see where it’s going. It’ll sit nicely as a Moon Knight story in anyone’s collection, especially with the reprints, but is it likely to translate those casual buyers into regular ones? Probably not.

Part of Christopher Yost and Craig Kyle’s mission statement for their third generation of X-Force was to counter criticisms of decompressed storytelling, promising to pack more plot into each issue than seen during their New X-Men days. True to their words, this first arc has proceeded with considerable pace, but even at the end of the fourth issue, there was still a feeling that we were only scratching the surface of the story: in the early stages of a yearlong epic, rather than a standard-length tale. With part five, however, the story takes a leftfield turn, bringing events to a true climax in time for the conclusion. The internal divisions within the Purifiers, an element of the book previously used merely for exposition, here take on a life of their own. 

While panel time is split fairly evenly between X-Force and their enemies, the opening battle between the team and a reborn Archangel is overshadowed by narration from the Purifier leader Mathew Risman, and it’s this character’s perspective and actions that dominate the issue. It marks a mature approach on the part of the writers not to feel compelled to place their protagonists at the centre of events, with the unstable edifice that the Purifiers have constructed collapsing quite convincingly of its own accord. However, not all of the Purifiers can justify the weight being placed upon then within this part of the story. While Eli is being intentionally shrouded in mystery (his engineering of Bastion’s resurrection makes it fairly obvious that he is only using the “Church” for his own ends), the Reverend Craig’s one-dimensionality is becoming an irritation. Wolfesbane’s biological father is too obscure a part of the X-verse for his return to engender any excitement, and the character is only interesting for the effect he has on Rhane. However, the time spend with Craig is sufficiently brief to avoid seriously detracting from the story. 

While Kyle & Yost are clearly at home in a mature-readers’ environment, Marvel plainly has some reservations about placing some of its more bankable characters in the blood-soaked world the writers have conjured. While the new X-Force’s battles have been not been suitable for children, none of Logan, Proudstar & Kinnery’s excursions to date have matched the Purifier-on-Purifier civil war for gratuitous violence. Clayton Crain cuts loose in a shocking double spread, making clear the full destructive potential of Risman’s Choir. The artist also deserves credit for being able to produce such high-quality work without giving cause for publication delays, although the writers are clearly helping him where possible- it’s hard to see the featureless white cell in which Wolfesbane is held as anything other than a device to reduce the amount that must be drawn. The focus on the villains’ internal politics means that this issue of the book is more to be intellectually admired than enjoyed, but the title’s earlier high standards are upheld.

Because, believe it or not, we’re all on holiday. Yep, all three of us. See how our mastery of scheduled posting presents the illusion of autonomy? The lights are on, but there’s nobody behind the wheel. Not too shabby. If all goes to plan, we’ll all be back tomorrow and posting will resume at the usual pace. Until then, please feel free to contemplate the way in which you were all fooled.