Queen & Country #24:
Paul Crocker, the functional boss of this title, gets a surprise that's none too pleasant. Warring factions inside the British intelligence community ... it's a little dry this month. Admittedly, the real life of intelligence operatives is often pretty dry (it's not all James Bond and Alias), but this story in particular has failed to enrapture. The research is impeccable, Mike Hawthorne's art is smart and crisp. But honestly, this is heavily procedural with a whiff of the bad things in government service, and I'm not interested.

Birds of Prey #66:
I'm susprised to not understand what happened here. Dinah sits and reads a diary entry of her mother's, and this leads her to a revelation about the story that's going on now. After reading the issue twice, I'm still stumped as to the connection. Maybe I'm just blind. After months of Ed Benes, Michael Golden's work seems strangely unfinished. While admittedkt fitting for the "period" piece, the visuals are good, but not as good as I'm used to. I had a feeling I should have read this one in the store, and I was right.

Abadazad #3:
More magical fun from CrossGen. The layers upon layers of story elements continues to fascinate me. In a more innocent, whimsical fashion, this title echoes the luxurious yet immediate magic of Fables in developing a complex world. however, has the advantage of several story elements most adults from the United States would recognize, while J.M. DeMatteis and his artistic cohorts are creating this entire world from their own imaginations. Truly brilliant work, and I plan to give copies to some of my nieces.

WildCATs 2.0 #20:
Not enough covert action in your WildCATs? Cole Cash agrees, and he gets the go-ahead from the android CEO to draft a team of misfits and ne'er-do-wells. Which is fun in a sort of goofy way, watching these disparate parties clear their schedules to get to the rendezvous. The Coda War takes a brief breather, as Zealot And Agent Orange get tortured along with two feds overseas. Not a bad issue, but not to the "oh my God" heights this title has achieved in the past.

Buy Pile Breakdown: With the exception of Abadazad, everybody underperformed this week. Dangit.

Then there's the stuff on the "read pile" that I don't bring home ...

Sojourn #34:
Arwyn wasn't even in this issue, possibly the most decompressed story from CrossGen I've ever seen (maybe three or four pages worth of story in the whole issue).

New Mutants #13:
Virtually the whole classic New Mutants lineup is on hand to fight Donald Pierce ... did somebody call Cher and turn back time when I wasn't watching? I haven't picked up this title in months, and it seems to be due to transform into something else ("New X-Men: Academy X" it said). I was not compelled.

Losers #11:
This was a slow down in pace and story, which I didn't really enjoy. Good action scene.

Mystique #13:
Also off its game, and a bumpy finale to Vaughan's run. Some decent action from Mystique, some decent dialogue from Shortpack, but it felt abbreviated and rushed, as a new creative team is due next issue (which normally means all of this will become irrelevant). Argh.

Conan #3:
Crom's favorite sword swinging Cimmerian continues to get his smack down, as his dreams of Hyborea get a dose of harsh reality. This book is such a simple pleasure that I feel I'm going to be buying this pretty soon ...

Avengers #81:
In a long-winded method of introducing the newest Captain Britain (and giving her a sufficiently angst-ridden origin story), the threat to England is beaten in a largely predictable fashion. All of the smart dialogue and snappiness of the start of the "Lionheart of Avalon" storyline is long, long gone. Blah.

Caper #7:
A sordid twist has done nothing to make this story more interesting to me. Much like I drifted out of American Century, this has none of the grim charm of the first storyline and I'm unmoved.

G.I. Joe Reloaded #2:
In this ultra-realistic take on the G.I. Joe team, Snake Eyes is a dangerous rogue and Cobra is smart. However, none of them are any fun, and even when Cobra was slaughtering people wholesale, they had a kind of zany whimsy which made them still seem somewhat endearing. This is just modern American terrorism dressed up in nostalgic clothes. More accurate, more intelligent, but less entertaining.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang #4:
Zany fun in all of the shagadelic Sean Connery style of the past. Played with a straight face, Britain's "secret weapon" gets a surprising upgrade and this reads like a Casino Royale version of Queen & Country. Good, but not good enough to buy. Better than a lot of what I read this week, though.

Punisher #5
Bang. The Punisher somehow makes his way out from under a task force of federal killers and a small team of wiseguys. Mayhem ensues. I'm pleased. If this storyline pays off, Punisher will be back on the Buy Pile with the next storyline.

Way of the Rat #23:
I really should stop reading this title as single issues. It's fun, it has some development, but it's really ... it's like a fraction of a story, with no episodic open or close.

Daredevil: Father #1:
Everybody else in the shop made fun of how chunky Quesada drew Daredevil, but I found the story strangely tender. The start was way, way stronger than the end, which felt uncertain, but the opening sequence up to "Happy Father's Day" was a brilliant sequence. I'm watching this with interest.

Flash #209:
There's times when I'm writing a work of fiction when I need to get a character from point A to point B for reasons of plot. The trick is making it interesting and not rote. Here, it's rote. Wally's "disappearing identity" has to be dealt with, and it is. Great. Let's move on ...

Frankenstein Mobster #3:
Again the word "prodcedural" comes to mind, and the art (or maybe it's the coloring, I get mixed up sometime) just kind of all washed together. This week really is dragging on ...

4 #5:
Camping? This kooky issue made fun of a lot of horror movie cliches (which was sort of funny) and somehow the Human Torch is about to become a firefighter (big laughs all around the store on that one) ... this title is so pretty and so stupid at the same time, and this issue is another example of that. Aguirre-Sacasa has some real ability to balance creative tension and make dialogue, but his plots are universally insipid thus far, although this issue wasn't as egregious as the last four.

JLA #97:
Gah ... awful. Let's just move on. I'll be happy when this Byrne/Claremont run is over. Somebody signed off on this? Mercy ...

Iron Man #80:
Tony Stark in Iraq! Interesting, smart stuff ... which feels less than relevant given the real future of this book. Still, very cool mix of tech and politics, with Tony being written more smartly than he's been in years.

Kinetic #2:
I'm gonna stop reading these books. The drab coloring is killing me. Anyway, this supposedly invulnerable sick kid ... oh, who am I kidding. This issue was dreadfully dull, and I'm done with the series.

Ministry of Space #3:
The secret is out ... and it's dull. The dreams of the English empire are built on innocent blood -- ooh, that's so different from the truth. I tire. This was certainly not worth the wait, despite being well depicted.

Legion #32:
My notes say, "Dumb." Garth (never a really smart guy in most Legion incarnations) does something so TV soap opera it made me roll my eyes. The Legion fails to intimidate with a show of force and have a hard time holding the high moral ground (when I think of how many pan-galactic threats came either directly or indirectly from the Legion, it makes me giggle). I am sad, as this title is so close to being good, but so rarely every achieves it.

Phantom Jack #2:
Now, don't get me wrong, I liked a lot about this issue (and it felt really heavy in my hand). However, it was not compelling enough to buy. It had some of the good aspects of the first, but less of the story density. I loved Jack on the airplane, which was a very well told (and non-gratuitous) segment. I'm still watching, but this just barely missed the Buy Pile for "intangible" reasons.

Silver Surfer #8:
The story is becoming more interesting (and involving Babylonian myth, which is a neat twist), but remains purposely vague. I do like the artwork, with sharp inks and coloring supporting the pencils. But this reads like a poor man's Millennium. Moving on ...

Superman #204:
A bold new era! Right. Apparently, a year ago something big happened, and it's a central plot point for this issue. However, nobody at the shop remembers it (and I've been reading the books fairly regularly, despite hating a lot of it, and I don't remember this catastrophic event). Anyhoo, Azzarello has a good command of the new character of Superman (seen in recent books -- confident, better with banter, less stuck up), but having him turn to a Catholic priest seems ... I dunno, an odd choice, as it's nothing like the Rao-worship of any version of Krypton I've seen. I'd expect him to track down a Kemetic priest, perhaps. Something more solar based. In any case, it was a good read, and of course pretty as all get out, but you can see it didn't get the bucks.

Ultimate 6 #7:
Ultimate Nick Fury makes no apologies about his corrupt behavior, and i feel that's part of his charm. Ultimate Cap, for the first time since his creation, questions his actions. For a moment. That made it really resonate, as it's not an everyday, crying-into-the-flag sorta thing like regular Cap has done so much in the past few years. In any case, a fairly predictable end comes to the villain collective and young Ultimate Osborne picks up the family vendetta. Thin storywise, and talky, but good.

Wanted Dossier:
Very interesting stuff, along the lines of a more snappy JLA-Z book, but it was a little thin for three bucks.

Transformers Generation One Volume 3 #4:
Omega Supreme smash! Sunstorm makes a convincing fight against the Autobots' last line of defense, but I felt (again) that a lot of the fight scenes were unclear (I feel crisper inking on focal points in the panels would help, with maybe some coloring changes). This title is still very inconsistent.

Avengers/Thunderbolts #3:
Crazy, interesting stuff. Tony Stark, hiding in plain sight as the Cobalt Man, gets sucked in by Zemo's wacky, morally flexible charm. The 'bolts succeed in sucking metahuman energy out of ... well, virtually everybody. All Hell is no more than a few feet from Breaking Loose, and nobody knows what will happen. Which is just freakin' great. If Marvel hadn't kicked me in the face so many times already, I'd have been buying this book from the start. I may have to go buy all the issues anyway.

Street Fighter #7:
My retailer, for some reason, thought this was a 6 issue mini. This issue may have had the same idea -- a couple of new characters get introduced in extremely brief strokes, some loose ends kind of dangle around pointlessly, and nothing really happens.

Ultimate Fantastic Four #5:
Ben Grimm is the best thing in this issue, a wise cracking, fist-swinging engine of comic goodness. Reed going "ow" the first time he does the "turn into a ball and bounce" bit was great. The characters are developing slowly but interestingly, and they managed to stop a huge monster from flattening Manhattan (I somehow believe it's just as dull in Ultimate Tacoma, Washington as it is in the real thing, but I digress). The slow start makes sense here, as they're all goofy kids, and if I wasn't against ... well, buying virtually all Ultimitizations, I'd be buying this.

Read Pile Roundup: An overwhelming amount of crap. Wow. It was a major chore getting through this stuff.

So, How Was It This Week? This week sucked. I'm going back to bed.

The Buy Pile is a weekly collection of comic reviews done by Hannibal Tabu (www.operative.net), originally published at UGO.com.