Making nothing out of ... something: At SBC, the often-puzzling Brandon Thomas takes a standard what-I-bought-this-week column and attempts to stretch it into a high-minded prognostication of the year to come:

"Going through my first batch of new comics for the year suggests a pattern of sorts, a blueprint that if followed, can be used to divine the future of your favorite companies. Here are the highlights from week one, along with added commentary of where this is all going."

To be fair, he did divine the future using four whole comics: "Superman/Batman," "Planetary," "Rex Mundi" and "Ultimate Fantastic Four."

Well, you know the old saying, "Where goes 'Rex Mundi,' so goes the industry."

As a result of his magical mystery tour, Brandon offers this earth-shaking pronouncement: "DC may have them in sheer numbers, but only one camp has Bendis, Millar, and Straczynski. The House of Ideas will lose a bit of ground to an encroaching DC, but their top creators still maintain their strange-hold on the majority of the chart."

Next week, tune in as Brandon burns a copy of "Spider-Girl" then tries to see the future in its ashes.