This week: Capsule reviews of Batman: The Widening Gyre #2, Gotham City Sirens #4, Hulk #15, Wolverine: Weapon X #5 and X-Men Forever #8!

Review: Batman: The Widening Gyre #2
It’s weird that Kevin Smith chooses to bring back late ’70s love interest Silver St. Cloud. It’s even weirder that he chooses to bring back obscure early ’90s villain Cornelius Stirk (with Walt Flanagan rendering the cannibal and his surroundings in far grislier fashion than Norm Breyfogle ever used to). But what takes the absolute biscuit is the fact that the early scenes see Batman fighting Fun Land. Fun Land. You know, the fat paedophile from Sandman. No, seriously. It’s honestly the strangest narrative choice I’ve seen in a comic for a very long time – it’s almost as if Smith just wanted to point out that he’d read Sandman, but didn’t get the memo about the confused relationship between Vertigo and the DCU proper nowadays. Not a bad comic, incidentally – this mini is already miles better than Cacophony, not least because Flanagan seems to have taken some intensive art lessons in the interim; and the flashback scenes are particularly cute – it’s just that it clearly exists in its own little world, out of any semblance of proper continuity, and it’s hard to know quite what to make of it. [SP]

Review: Gotham City Sirens #4
You know, if DC really are just going to decide that continuity is to be entirely ignored from now on, it’d be nice if we could get an official announcement. Because to have a proper, in-continuity DCU book – set quite clearly at a particular time (i.e. post Batman RIP) – that manages to completely ignore the fact that Morrison reinvented and restyled the Joker, instead having him run around with his “classic” personality and accoutrements (or, more specifically, writing him as the Animated Series version), just takes the piss. I already suspected that Dini was doing little other than paying lip service to the wider Bat-continuity by virtue of his insistence on making the books all about his pet character, Hush – but this is clear proof of that. As an issue on its own it’s actually quite a bit better than this series has previously been – it’s quite fun, and it’s largely about Harley and the Joker but in a way that hasn’t really been done before, and Dini writes both of those characters (even when doing completely the wrong version) very well. But – and I will retract this if it turns out to be an “all is not as it seems” trick, which could be the case as the character doesn’t even appear on the cover despite not having been seen since the ambulance crash in RIP – for a title that’s obligated to fit into a wider context, it’s unforgiveably lax. [SP]

Review: Hulk #15
Casually flicking through Hulk after so many issues away is a sobering experience for the poor innocent who had assumed that, given that the book still existed and yet people weren’t really talking about it so much any more, it might have hoisted itself up towards being an almost mediocre read. So, let’s see… the Red Hulk is now a tortured anti-hero? And he gets to narrate the book? And the Punisher is on his side? And, because he’s a tortured anti-hero, he now needs to be flawed all of a sudden – so he’s defeated by a process so simple you wonder how all the earth-shatteringly powerful figures he’s previously smashed into the ground didn’t think to try? So, no. It isn’t getting any better. Especially when you’ve got Ian Churchill trying out his new Ed-McGuinness-ripoff style – and I’m sorry, shoulder injury or no shoulder injury, this book simply looks wretched. Oh, and then Red She Hulk turns up. Make. It. Stop. [SP]

Review: Wolverine: Weapon X #5
Some people complain about Wolverine being over-exposed. As I realise that he’s currently in ALL of the comics we’re doing capsule reviews in at the time I write this (Seb probably will add some that he isn’t in later. DC titles should be a reasonably safe bet) I can’t help but wonder if there might be a grain of truth in that assessment. Even so, if only one Wolverine book deserves to exist, this is the one. Weapon X is the only title currently doing Proper Wolverine Stories, in which he acts like himself, against threats pertinent to himself, and doesn’t spend time agonising over crazy conspiracy elements retconned into his life. Jason Aaron gets Wolverine more than almost any writer has in years. Between his writing and Garney’s art, this series has finally managed to reclaim a level of centrality to Wolverine’s character much like his solo series used to have in the old days. It’s just a pity it’s doing quite poorly, sales-wise. [JHu]

Review: X-Men Forever #8
It looks like we’ve got a bona fide classic on our hands, with Forever managing to feel exactly as it should: an entire franchise distilled into one book. The way that Nick Fury has been integrated into the team is a perfect example of how non-mutant elements of the Marvel Universe can be meshed with the X-Men mythos, while Chris Claremont’s perfect grasp of each of the regular characters is for once the window dressing on an expansive and coherently-plotted epic, with the writer’s long-running plot for once not being turned into a pinball table by commercial concerns. Only some rather lifeless colouring spoils a superbly enjoyable book. [JHa]