X-STATIX #13

Peter Milligan and Mike Allred had planned a storyline entitled "Di Another Day" for their fabulous X-STATIX. It was to be a tale in which the late Princess Diana would come back to life and join X-Statix, the team of celebrity mutants. In the end, Marvel forced Milligan and Allred to change the storyline, rumors saying that Marvel Studios' "Hollywood friends" were upset by how Marvel was treating the memory of Hollywood's martyred noblewoman.

Despite the changes in both script and Allred's art, the new character Henrietta Hunter still looks like the late princess. The story, as with most of the Milligan/Allred X-Statix run, is quite entertaining.

Allred's art with his wife Laura's colors really looks like old-fashioned comic book art. It's a nice combination of the storytelling styles of Silver Age Marvel, DC, and Tower Comics. Milligan's scripts deftly combines satire, parody, and farce into comics that are not only just fun to read, but are also filled with pointed commentary. When one considers that creators have spent the better part of four decades trying to making comic book stories seem like they'd make sense in the real world, there's no more real version of what American superheroes would be like than Milligan's X-Statix. Grade A-