Brian Bolland is probably best known to readers of this site for his work on Judge Dredd or Batman: The Killing Joke. There are far worse properties a creator could be associated with, certainly, but Bolland himself has always been a remarkably versatile artist, capable of effortlessly carrying virtually any genre, given the chance to illustrate it. Which is good, because the stories in this comic – a collection of strips written and drawn by Bolland in the mid-80s – are in a genre all their own.

Captioned throughout in rhyming couplets, the Actress and the Bishop tells the stories of two unlikely cohabitees (note that “actress” is a more polite way of saying “prostitute”) and covers, through a whimsical filter, both character’s unconventional relationships with both their professions and one another. The stories straddle genres, part comedy-of-manners, part horror, part existentialist pornography, part spiritualist soap opera. It’s light and dark at the same time. At a glance it can seems impossibly superficial, yet a well-place turn of phrase or slip of the pencil turns it deeply introspective.

There’s a remarkably restrained Englishness to the stories – the contrast between the restrained facade and the raging emotions beneath epitomises a certain stereotype of Englishness, and takes on a gentle, nostalgic quality. The portrayal of the two characters carries a coy, sexually-charged air, and the stories dive deep into both of their motivations and attitudes without ever getting seedy or judgemental about their behaviour. Although the character designs could have seemed flamboyant or misplaced in the hands of another artist, Bolland’s precise linework anchors them perfectly within in the world shown in the strip.

For $3.99, you get all the published appearances to date of the characters, which comprise 2 3-page strips from the A1 anthology, together with a 17-page story previously only seen in the artwork collection “Bolland Strips!” a few years ago. Desperado have done comicdom a fantastic service by putting these stories into print as a traditional pamphlet, and having read it several times already, I know it’s one of those comics I”ll return to again and again. It’s rare you get to feel like you’ve “discovered” an artist you’re already so familiar with, but it’s making me see Bolland in an entirely new light – and if nothing else, that feeling is worth the cover price alone.

Uncanny may have pulled out the big guns for this week’s crossover one-shot, but Warren Ellis’s more trade-paperback orientated sci-fi X-Men resolutely refuse to back down, in what’s easily the strongest issue of the present team’s run. After a series of extremely focussed issues, the writer finally combines action, character development and an unexpectedly conclusive resolution to the plotline in one satisfying package.

Cyclops and his first-choice team may have tracked down the source of the extra-dimensional mutant incursions plaguing the earth, but the culprit isn’t giving up any ground. Finding themselves being forced to play their chosen roles in the scheme, the team end up deploying a distinctly authoritarian trump card to save the day. Beast’s reflections on the outcome are familiar from the end of the ‘Shiftships’ arc of Ellis’s genre-defining superhero title, but there’s a memorable bit of commentary on the evolution of this franchise to allow such a dénouement- it’s a far more subtle than normal example of Scott Summers’ new philosophy affecting his entire team. The book’s guest star is well-handled, with a fitting resolution for a character that had become an unwelcome loose end in the broader tapestry of the X-verse. Interestingly, it took the X-Men’s most hard sci-fi approach in a long time to show the flaws of its resident engineer.

With the exception of a cover that appears to be demonstrating Cyclops’s new ‘laser sneeze’ secondary mutation, this is Simone Bianchi’s strongest work on the book. His departure from the title after this arc is understandable, given that Astonishing has effectively been operating on a bimonthly schedule, but he’s given us a more than memorable parting shot. I’ve been one of the artists defenders, but sadly some of the criticism has been proved right, as the simpler layouts imposed by time restrictions have resulted in more appealing art overall. There’s no loss of the lavishness that has characterised the creator’s work, but adopting a more squared-off panels shape during the second half of the issue really improves the storytelling, with events far more clear. Phil Jimenez is being drafted in for Ellis’s second arc, just as he once replaced Frank Quietly on the franchise, but Bianchi will certainly leave a lasting impression.

With the story smartly polished off, and no clumsy foreshadowing for the next arc, Astonishing is clearly targeted at the collected editions market. The sheer quality, however, is more than enough to make the serialized incarnation an essential purchase.

This week’s capsule reviews cover Amazing Spider-Man #598, New Avengers #54, The Last Days of Animal Man #2, X-Factor #45 and X-Force #16

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You know, I’d have been minded to open this review with a grumble about the lead character of the world’s longest-running continuously-published comic being unceremoniously booted out of the pages he made his own just so that DC could shift a few more copies of a story that they chickened out of giving its own series and effectively sat on for a couple of years. But it turns out that them doing that is actually a bloody good idea, if it means getting more people to read this – because it’s actually kind of excellent.

Primarily, as I’m about the millionth person online to say, that’s because of the way it looks. No two ways about it, this is a beautiful, incredible-looking comic. If JH Williams III showed with his “Club of Heroes” collaboration with Morrison (not to mention the all-too-brief stint on this very book back at the start of Dini’s run) that he had the potential to tell dazzlingly atmospheric noirish Bat-stories, then it’s here that he opens up and fulfils that potential. It’s not even one particular element that does it – it’s the entire package. Naturally the character work and draftsmanship are as classy as you’d expect, making for a sumptuous feast for the eyes, and one for which colourist Dave Stewart deserves just as much credit – but his storytelling is magnificent also.

This isn’t so much in a Quitely-esque, moment-to-moment kind of way, though, as it is the way he uses the composition of panels to trigger mood in the reader’s mind. The gorgeous, dark epics that stretch across the pages whenever Kate is Batwoman – layered blacks and greys broken up by evocative slashes of her white skin and the brash, orange-red elements of her outfit – use unconventional panel layouts, but strung along a theme that deliberately causes a “flash” in the reader’s mind: you can’t help but think “bat” as your eye scans across the jagged lines. All of a sudden you can almost see what Simone Bianchi’s been trying to do in Astonishing X-Men, only… you know, done properly. Even better, though, is the contrast between these scenes and those featuring her out of costume. The colours get sunnier and brighter, the panels go back to conventional boxes – and not even with the jarring effect of a turn of the page, but instead in a left-to-right progression across a double spread. It’s bravura stuff, it really is.

Still, even as the issue is entirely worth buying for the art alone (and it’s not often I say that), it’s lucky that the story is pretty decent as well. It’s a bit difficult to figure out exactly where it’s supposed to take place – Batman and Detective should never take place in entirely different timeframes, and there’s “Batman Reborn” branding on the cover; yet the Batman who appears feels more Bruce than Dick, and references to the precise time that’s supposed to have elapsed since we first saw Kate are vague at best. That said, despite the fact that she’s only made fleeting appearances since her overhyped debut in 2006, Rucka does a good job of leading us into this as a new setup – it’s a well-played “issue one”. We learn as much as we need to about her character (and come to that, her experiences in 52 seem to have lent her a welcome sense of humility), personal life and “hero” setup – right down to her “Alfred” figure, an apparent father with whom she shares her masked life in an interesting, militaristic way. As far as I’m aware, this character is entirely new – but again, we’re given all we really need.

That said, for all the decent character setup, I can’t say that the opening “case” has much of a hook – the “Religion of Crime” idea isn’t desperately interesting (and I honestly can’t recall where they spring from originally – are we going back to 52, and the people who stabbed her, here? A bit more of a refresher would have been nice), and “Alice” is well designed but drawn almost entirely from a combination of existing cliches. Even so, this is a mightily impressive start to the run (to say nothing of the fact that, hey! Detective is (sort of) an anthology book again! And the backup story is a Proper Detective Story about ReneeQuestion! And it’s drawn by Cully Hamner! And it’s quite good as well!), and in tandem with Batman & Robin (not to mention an acceptable if unspectacular range of peripheral books), you have to say the Batbooks are looking in splendid condition. Bruce who?

The last time there was a formal X-Men/Avengers crossover, we ended up with Bloodties, which was a complete mess best left forgotten. Sadly, if we’ve learnt anything from X-Men/Dark Avengers: Utopia, it’s that the 14 year abstention lasted that long reason.

Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to like this. I really did. And to be fair, it’s not without it’s good moments. Fraction effectively portrays the confusion and bubbling tension of the anti-mutant march and the response to it, and the scenes between Cyclops and the San Franciscan Mayor are nice and sharp. It’s just that what surrounds them is such a disappointment that it’s hard to appreciate even the good bits.

Silvestri’s art is a major problem with the issue. It appears to be a real rush-job, with an art team that comprises 13 individuals besides Silvestri himself doing either pencil “assists” or inking. The book looks poorly-finished as a result, and even bits that are recognisably Silvestri display all the worst excesses of the man’s style, particularly in Emma’s ludicrous outfit and the downright hilarious posing that passes for “storytelling” in Silvestri’s world. Worse is that so much of the script relies on crowd scenes, where Silvestri’s inability to render more than two facial expressions really starts to show. Far better artists would struggle with the demands of the script. Silvestri positively buckles beneath them.

Sadly, the script itself isn’t without fault either. The twist ending borders on incomprehensibility, as Xavier’s involvement is revealed and Emma inexplicably changes costumes. Although billed as a co-starring book, the Dark Avengers are inserted largely as an afterthought. It is, for all intents and purposes, a regular X-Men issue guest-starring Osborn’s Avengers team. It’s unclear what, exactly, these guys are in the story for.

Whether or not the storyline will continue in this vein remains to be seen – it’s entirely possible that with the setup established, things will shift gears and become more satisfying, but it’s a highly debatable – and it already looks unlikely that things will reach the same level of excitement as the Messiah Complex crossover that actually kicked off this site in the first place.

DC appear to have finally cracked the problem of how to get the purchasers of single issues to still fork out for the trade, in this collection of the bizarre fifties Batman tales which fuel Grant Morrison’s run on the book. Even without the introduction by the writer, a cursory reading would make the connections obvious, and the result is an essential purchase for fans of Batman R.I.P. and the epic story that surrounds it. The only slight quibble is the admission fee, but the resolutely un-decompressed storytelling going some way towards remedying disquiet.

The twelve stories reproduced here, mainly from writer Bill Finger, vary drastically in tone. DC has struck a careful balance here, including a few choice examples of this era’s surrealism alongside the expected stories. Although the sheer bizarreness of seeing Bruce Wayne assisting a south American country resist the rage of a rainbow-powered monster offers some entertainment, the greater draw is in those stories more open to modern reinterpretation.  The story ‘A Partner for Batman’ is initially striking due to the amount of unintentional gay innuendo it contains, although by the time that a passer-by has remarked on how Batman and his new older Robin replacement “can do things together”, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that the scripter knew exactly what he was doing.

The adventures that Morrison has directly recast are the main draw, with the original Zur En Arch tale the most obvious inclusion. The one downside to this process is that it’s now impossible to fully appreciate ‘Robin Dies At Dawn’, probably the strongest story in the collection, on its own merits. The infamous isolation chamber experiment is now seen as having a scope far beyond that depicted on the page, being relied upon to account for must of the strangeness in this entire volume. The appearance of the ‘Military Doctor’ is the final nail in the coffin of a contextually-faithful reading. Having a minor character retconed into the embodiment of Satan is unfortunately the sort of thing that tends to leave an impression. The original appearances of the Club of Heroes largely escape this fate, with the Club’s unironic tone completely removed from their Morrison incarnation.

‘The Superman of Planet X’ has been widely distributed online, and given how essential that tale is to understanding Batman R.I.P., it was probably only the promotional emphasis on the extremely gritty Nolan film that prevented the release of The Black Casebook this time last year. You wouldn’t see the successful combination of this price and poor paper stock without the hook of Morrison’s run, but this remains an essential purchase.