Iron Man #31 - Once you accept that this isn't going to be very good, it's actually not that bad, if that makes any sense. Two complaints: 1) I think to myself, 'Man, that looks a lot like Braniac's skull-ship, and a few pages later the characters refer to it as "that Braniac thing" - guys, if you're aware that you're ripping off your competition, change the design. 2) Is this the second? third? time Iron Man has been in a bind and then said "Wait a minute! My opponent doesn't know about... Extremis!". Why isn't he just using his armor to its potential the whole time? Anyway, not terrible if approached the right way.

X-Force #5 - Not thrilled about the turn of events where the bad guys are now fighting amongst themselves. This wasn't a great issue. *I* don't have any problems with the art, though.

Hercules #119 - This continues to be great.

Captain America #40 - Now i like the way these bad guys fight amongst themselves. It's realistic and despite their differences they still manage to work together. Bucky's confrontation with 50s Cap was cool too. Ah, it's just a damn good comic overall, and Epting's back on art.

Mighty Avengers #16 - On an irrelevant point, what is this story doing in Mighty Avengers? The Elektra plot took place in New. Anyway, i enjoyed this even if it seems a bit much for Elektra to be able to take out three super-skrulls by herself. But is she dead? She sure looked dead. At least we now we know that the point of this wasn't to retcon out every post-Frank Miller appearance of Elektra, which is good.

how come they didn't have to first bathe themselves in her blood before becoming elektra? isn't that part of the process for remaining undetected? all the other skrulls first infiltrated the lives of their targets and incapacitated them so they could get their blood for their transformation ritual. here, 1 skrull shows up already as elektra and the 2nd takes on her form after beating the crap out of her. but no lengthy, anti-detection ritual. that's cheating.