Finally, the Dark Avengers meet the New Avengers for the match-up you’ve been waiting for!

Or rather… they don’t. You can colour me slightly miffed that the meeting I was looking forward to – the one that was advertised in all the material and on the cover of the book – DIDN’T ACTUALLY HAPPEN. It makes complete sense, of course, and shows exactly how formidable Osborn is now that he’s in a position of power, but, well, it’s not exactly the comic that was advertised…

That aside, there’s much to love about the issue. The issue does, at least, feature the New Avengers reacting to the first appearance of the “Dark” Avengers, and that scene plays out with some of Bendis’ funniest dialogue for ages – although Phillip Tan’s artwork for the same scene leaves much to be desired. As improved as Tan is, he’s not really in the same league as the book’s previous artists. On a title like New Avengers, readers deserve top artistry.

On some level Marvel do understand that – this issue, extra-sized, has a unique gimmick of having single page character focusses during the big fight scene, drawn by artists associated with that character, including some brilliant spidey art by McNiven and an always-welcome glimpse of Gaydos drawing Jessica Jones. It’s a unique approach to a fight scene, and a welcome “event” to mark the book’s 50th issue – even if that does mean seeing some of Greg “got the” Horn’s laughable attempts at rendering an interior page.

Of course, as good as the plot is, and as special as the extra artwork is, there’s one fact that deeply overshadows this entire issue, and that’s the price. If part of you doesn’t wince at the idea of paying $4.99 for an issue of New Avengers, then, well, you’re lucky that you’re rich enough not to care. I used to pride myself on buying comics with scant regard for how much it actually cost – but when one comic costs almost 4 quid, it’s genuinely hard not to complain. I actually bought a *NEW* TPB containing 8 issues of Fantastic Four for less than twice that price. I don’t want to stop buying singles, I’m sure Marvel don’t want me to stop buying singles, but this is getting ridiculous.

And so The Little Series That Couldn’t finally meets its end. It’s hard to know exactly what else Blue Beetle could have done to earn some much-needed support from DC – apparently, coming up with the best new lead character the publisher has had in years, not to mention a superb and immediately-engaging supporting cast, throwing in a unique and kind of brilliant costume and power set, enjoying immediate popularity when translating the character to a new popular Batman cartoon series, being more respectful to the character’s antecedents than Dan Didio has ever been, and telling stories that start out as witty teen-tries-to-cope-with-powers comedy drama (under Giffen and Rogers) before exploding into an utterly awesome and epic alien invasion saga (under Rogers solo), simply won’t cut it if you’re not written by Geoff Johns. Alright, so the series had settled down into being “good” rather than “excellent” under Matthew Sturges, and never seemed to have quite the same visual spark without Cully Hamner or Rafael Albuquerque on art duties, but it was still generally entertaining and one of DC’s absolute best current superhero books – so cutting the series so drastically short and fobbing Jaime off into the terminally-dull Teen Titans seems like unduly harsh punishment.

As it happens, underneath a  wonderful Hamner cover (echoing his equally wonderful cover to #1) is an issue that sees the title going out with a bit of a whimper, rather than a bang. There’s a definite sense of trying to tidy up Jaime’s individual mythology and supporting cast as quickly as possible – so as to leave him little in the way of unnecessary baggage for his ongoing team-based adventues – and it’s probably this that results in the rushed and somewhat ill-thought-out sudden death of one of those secondary characters. There’s nothing like enough page time for the likes of Paco, Brenda and Traci – the people who’ve helped make the book so distinctively great – and the battle with the Kdra, despite its tragic consequences, feels too inconsequential when compared with the final issues of Rogers’ run. Visually it suffers, too, and you can’t help but wish Hamner had been able to return for the interiors as well as the cover. It feels rushed and particularly sloppy in the closing pages, while I still can’t get over how Barberi misinterprets the “horns” on the back of the costume, especially as you’ve got them being done properly on the issue’s front.

But Sturges still knows how to throw out some neat moments, and he – like Rogers – is suitably respectful of the legacy of the Blue Beetle name, so there’s plenty of spiel in Jaime’s “hero reconsidering his role” internal monologue (a standard feature of any character’s final issue) about living up to Kord and Garrett. Indeed, it’s this that leads to perhaps the best moment of the writer’s brief run – as Jaime falls through space, he ponders that “Dan Garrett in this situation would probably have done something dashing and bold that got him out of the scrape just in the nick of time. Ted Kord would have done something clever and out of left field. And he would have chuckled while he did it. But I don’t know what Dan would have done. And I don’t know what Ted would have done. I’m not them,” before coming up with a solution that combines the best of both of them. It’s a lovely moment, and demonstrative of what this character and series are… were… capable of.

It’s a crying shame that DC haven’t given this excellent title more support – I know that when something’s just not selling, it’s not selling, but I’ve never seen promotional material for it like I have for, say, Captain Britain, and simply not bothering to try and capitalise on the success of Jamie’s Brave and the Bold episode was downright baffling – and it makes me more than a little annoyed at them. I’ll be trying to keep up with Jaime’s future adventures as best as possible, and hopefully his supporting cast will still be around as well – but the unique little niche that Blue Beetle had carved out for itself will be sorely missed.

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And suddenly, it all clicks into place. After a rocky start to Peter David’s attempt at an attention-grabbing blockbuster, this instalment delivers an entire issue of perfectly pitched drama. X-Factor began life as a Madrox limited series, and stripping away the rest of the cast frees the book from the additions that were choking it, allowing the perfect characterisation at its core to shine through.

Having abandoned his detective agency after the events of the last issue, Jamie Madrox here makes another intrusion into the life of John, his one duplicate who has truly established his own identity as a (family) man of God. There’s an initially tense standoff with both Madroxes attempting to defuse an argument conducted at gunpoint, but it’s nothing to the fireworks that follow when the two men get to talk alone. The real Madrox has drawn the inevitable conclusion from the events of the previous thirty nine issues- any happiness he receives is merely a fleeting respite from misery and failure, and he’s had enough of the permanent downward spiral of his life, Even without the events of the first part of the story, this would have been an understandable, if drastic conclusion to derive from the many failures the book has featured and is also perfectly consistent with the tone of the title since the Messiah Complex crossover. The book’s initial twin sources of light relief are long gone, with Layla Miller trapped in the distant future and the domesticity of the team’s situation having vanished as a story strand since their relocation to Detroit.

It’s possible to take a harsher view of the issue’s success, feeling that the production of such heart-rending drama is simply the result of dropping second-rate supporting characters Longshot and Darwin and the incorporation of a strong focus on the main character, but everything about the issue screams that a more charitable perspective is appropriate. David obviously completely understands the book he has created recognising the downward spiral into depression that the story has followed since the conclusion of the Singularity Inc storyline. With Uncanny taking a turn into more familiar “hatred and feared” territory, the possibility of a more Jamie-focussed X-Factor on the up is to be welcomed, and the writer’s decision to make his Hamlet subtext an explicit presence in the dialogue suggests that the cliff-hanger here will serve as a conclusion to the noir-themed book’s “dark” phase.

This chapter of the Rogue arc takes the rather odd step of not actually including its main villain, Danger, in any direct capacity. Instead, Danger’s role is altered so that she is orchestrating the environment, replaying Rogue’s memories through the use of Danger Room simulations. The technique acts as a far more elegant way to weave the series’ trademark flashbacks in and out of the story, though as ever, if you don’t have the knowledge to identify what you’re seeing, you’re not going to get it here.

The arc isn’t quite what it should be yet – so far, Danger’s targeting of Rogue makes very little sense, nor the manner in which she attempts to subdue her. Likewise, Mystique’s appearances in Rogue’s psyche seem positively confusing – in a story stuffed with holograms, Mystique is actually a mental projection of Rogue’s, but it clashes to have both going on at the same time.

Carey’s stories on X-Men Legacy have been of uneven quality from arc to arc – at its worst, Carey’s writing is incredibly transparent in its attempt to correct the “mistakes” of continuity, and even at its best, it relies on somewhat gimmicky ties to history. Whether the book really does exist purely to serve Carey’s own sense of continuity, it certainly wasn’t designed to serve the majority of fans, and it’s probably for the best that “Legacy” – entertainingly nostalgic as it is – is only a limited story.

The one element of the book that has consistently improved is the artwork. This issue might actually be my favourite yet, with both present and flashback sequences cleanly pencilled and brightly coloured -  a far cry from the title’s earlier, shadowy look. There’s no part of the book that fails outright, but levelled against the rest of the X-line, it distinguishes itself purely by being, well… a bit mediocre and forgettable.

Regular readers of the site will have noticed that James and I have a somewhat bipolar relationship with Matt Fraction’s X-title, praising its characterisation one month and attacking weak plotting the next. Thankfully, this third part of the writer’s Lovelorn arc is the moment when the nature of the title become clear, with its curious mixture of strengths and weaknesses defined.

While the broader picture of mutantkind’s position of the world becomes more clearly resolved, Colossus’s kill or cure bid to overcome his grief comes to a head rather quicker than expected, as he discovers the true nature of the business his “undercover” investigation has stumbled upon. This mixture of events throws into focus both what’s right and wrong with the book. To start with the positive, Fraction has obviously decided to make Uncanny the line’s flagship title. As we’ve observed previously, Warren Ellis’s Astonishing looks set to join Whedron’s take on the book as a TPB heavy-hitter, while the other titles leave it in solitary confinement. This issue is reminiscent of the Civil War/ Secret Invasion core series, offering a story that draws on themes to have been explored in greater detail in other titles, while still telling a coherent story in its own right. It relays recent events from X-Force, such as the construction of a new and influential anti-mutant cabal, while commandingly feeding the developments into a new global status quo.

The great strength of the title is this authoritative feel, with the writer in complete control of the events he recounts, and some good characterisation supports this with Fraction’s grip on his core cast exemplary. The book’s problem is in the original stories he tells, which are derivative and unconvincing. The momentum of the SFX plotline has dissipated, with Rasputin involved in a dull GTA IV-inspired Russian mob drama, while Beast attempts to handle the Godzilla knock-off created by a Japanese mad scientist. These events undo the social realism of the book’s repositioning of the mutant species, resulting in a very confused identity for the title. The desire to cover more ground than a focus on a single plotline would permit is laudable, but the writer just isn’t providing solid enough ideas to convey the sense of scale he seeks. Fraction may be guilty of dumbing down his work too much, in the mistaken belief that the X-readership would be uninterested in a book without a fight sequence. The writer is doing a superb job of tying together themes and threads from the line as a whole, but his own contributions are a little lacking.

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…will return next week when there will hopefully be enough interesting comics out for us to do capsule reviews in addition to the main ones! If you want, use this post to discuss what you actually bought this week. For me, it was nothing but X-Books, Dark Avengers and Spider-Man – what do you think was the week’s “big” release?