New comics 2/8

Cable & Deadpool #25 (Fabian Nicieza/Lan Medina, Marvel)
It's sort of amazing that this book has made it to its 25th issue, and I'm heartened that Cable's impending addition to the cast of X-Men doesn't seem to spell doom for this title. It's unfortunate to see Patrick Zircher go, though, and Medina's decent but bland art is a definite step down. They've also gotten rid of Udon on inks and colors, which would have helped bring a certain continuity to the look. Still, the art is fine, and Nicieza tells an interesting story about Captain America coming to Providence and essentially getting schooled by Cable. It seems forbidden to ever make Captain America look inferior to anyone, so I like the perspective that Nicieza has here, even if it sort of backpedals from last issue's ominous cliffhanger. Next is an X-Men crossover featuring the return of Apocalypse, which I'm not crazy about, but if that's what it takes to keep this book around, I guess it's okay.

Fables #46 (Bill Willingham/Jim Fern, DC/Vertigo)
Another of Willingham's little two-part side stories, and again I'm impressed with how he can show the way that life is normal and stable even for those in the "evil" empire of the Adversary. None of the main characters of the series show up in this story about two wooden soldiers in love, but it does a nice job of showing a different side of the world that Willingham's created. I'm only vaguely familiar with Fern, and I associate him with generic superhero work, but his art here has a sort of storybook quality that works well for the plot. These diversions are always nice, but of course it'll be even better to get back to the next multi-part story.

Young Avengers #10 (Allan Heinberg/Jim Cheung, Marvel)
Heinberg keeps messing with the status quo, introducing a new team member and further integrating the Vision into the team in this issue. He also pulls out one of his top-notch cliffhanger endings again, and those two aspects mark the similarities between this book and Runaways. The only problem I had with this issue was in Cheung's art, which normally I think is great. But an important plot point hinges on the uncanny resemblance between Wiccan and the new character, and it's sort of vague in the dialogue, so I had to read certain scenes several times before I got what was going on. The problem isn't what Heinberg wrote, but that he relies on Cheung's art to sell the similarity and all of Cheung's faces look pretty similar already. That's not usually a problem, but here it added unnecessary confusion to what was otherwise a very good issue.