No X-Axis for the next two weeks either, because I’m off on holiday.  I’ll probably do some sort of midweek round-up when I get back.  In the meantime, don’t forget that there’s a new episode of the podcast, waiting for you just one post down.

And now, the reviews!

Amazing Spider-Man Presents: American Son #4 – The final issue of the miniseries.  These Spider-Man tie-in minis haven’t been doing especially well for Marvel, no doubt in part because they’re so clearly positioned as the “optional extras” for a book that’s already shipping three times a month.  (Even if you might be up for buying yet another Spider-Man book each month, Marvel have pretty much erected a neon sign telling you that you needn’t bother.)

In fact, objectively speaking, this ought to be a reasonably significant story, since it does fairly substantial things with both Harry Osborn and, of all people, Gabriel Stacy.  Not that anyone was really crying out to see more of Gabriel Stacy, the fast-grown twin son of Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy, from the largely-best-forgotten “Sins Past” story.  And admittedly, writer Brian Reed is playing him here as a sort of generic maniac.  But in some ways it does work, because he’s using the character to play off Harry’s own relationship with his supervillain father; Gabriel shows up primarily to serve as a foil for Harry, a lunatic laying claim to the family tradition that Harry doesn’t particularly want, and in that role he works quite well.  There’s some quite good art from Phillipe Briones, as well, reminiscent of Ron Garney – well, until the fill-in pencillers show up on the last few pages, but at least they left it to the epilogue.

The problem remains that Gabriel isn’t a particularly intriguing character in his own right, but Harry is, and there’s enough in here to get a good story out of them.

Astonishing X-Men #35 – The final issue of the Warren Ellis/Phil Jimenez storyline, and presumably the final issue of the series, since they certainly haven’t solicited anything else.  In this issue, the X-Men fight their way to confront the baddie, who turns out to be an embittered mutant who doesn’t have powers so much as a degenerative disease.  He hates the X-Men because they’re too pretty.  And, um, that’s it.  Yes, I know it’s a deliberate anticlimax, the point being that the crazed maniac villain probably doesn’t have a very good reason, but if you’re going to do that ending, it’s maybe better to go for fewer than six issues of build-up.

Battlefields #9 – Garth Ennis’s war story series completes the three-part “Motherland”, a sequel to his earlier “Night Witches” story about Soviet women fighter pilots in World War II.  Ennis never seems quite as comfortable writing female characters.  But there’s some good stuff in here with Anna settling into a mentor role, and dark comedy with the bunch of useless rookies who are clearly being packed off as cannon fodder in the USSR’s ever-popular “throw bodies at the Germans until they run out of ammunition” strategy.  The ending’s maybe a bit too bleak to be truly satisfying, but then I suspect that’s partly the idea.

Curse of the Mutants: Blade - The first of two “Curse of the Mutants” tie-in one-shots this week.  This is a prologue story by Duane Swierczynski and Tim Green, explaining why Blade shows up in San Francisco to help out the X-Men.  It doesn’t seem to contain anything particularly important to the crossover, but there are a couple of neat character moments with Blade’s makeshift group of vampire hunters, all of whom are clearly somewhere between eccentric and nuts, the idea presumably being that everyone in their line of work is a bit odd.  The art is… a bit inconsistent, shall we say.  There are  some very good designs for the new characters, and some well executed sequences, but overall it’s a bit wobbly, the level of detail varies wildly, and some of the body language is all over the place.

Curse of the Mutants: Storm & Gambit – This, on the other hand, turns out to be absolutely essential to the plot.  It’s the issue where the X-Men go after Dracula’s body.  Or rather, just Storm and Gambit, because they’re trying stealth rather than force.  Ultimately it’s a functional story where the two thief characters go on a heist and hook up with the renegade vampire Janus, but writer Chuck Kim has a decent grasp of the characters, and gets some good moments out of the play between the authority figure Storm and the chaotic Gambit.  (He’s also the sort of writer who’s clearly spent some time thinking of the possible plot holes and chucking in lines of dialogue to seal them off, which I appreciate, though I realise some people may not put so much weight on that.)  Art is by Chris Bachalo, who handles the two leads well, albeit that some of the fight scenes have the legibility problems that often affects his work when he’s handling action.

Dark Wolverine #90 – The final issue (before the reboot) sees Daken wandering around San Francisco, apparently tailing Wolverine’s girlfriend (the journalist from Jason Aaron’s series) before deciding not to bother doing anything about it.  Not a story so much as a soliloquy in which Daken assures us that he’s no longer interested in Wolverine and wants to escape from his father’s shadow by going his own way.  Much depends on whether you think we’re meant to take Daken’s soliloquy at face value.  On one view, it’s thunderously pretentious stuff, even down to the obligatory tarot-reading scene, something that even Vertigo seem to have retreated from due to overuse.  On the other, you could read the story from the standpoint that this is how Daken sees himself, and the style reflects his own sense of self-importance.  I’m honestly not quite sure which the writers were going for, though I suspect a bit of both.  Either way, though, it’s not really a story, nor does it seem to offer any particularly compelling insight into the character’s psyche.

Ex Machina #50 – Brian K Vaughan and Tony Harris’ series about a superhero turned politician reaches its conclusion, in downbeat and rather self-referential fashion.  I’m going to have to go back and re-read the whole series when I get a chance, but the final issue seems mostly concerned with the idea that Mitch Hundred has come round to an “ends justify the means” philosophy – apparently sincerely convinced that he can best help people by getting into power, and ultimately willing to make that his top priority.  Some of the big shocks at the end teeter on the verge of being silly, but I think Vaughan just about gets away with them.  Still, I’ll be interested to look back over the series and see how well it reads in the light of where the character ends up.

Namor: The First Mutant #1 – Debut issue of a new ongoing series which they’re rather optimistically claiming is an X-book.  Sure it is.  Quite why we’re having another go at relaunching this character, I’m not altogether sure.  If anyone involved has a big idea for the new series, it’s certainly not to be found in this issue, which is a dreary and uninspiring plod through some crossover plot mechanics.  Technically it’s significant to the wider story – it involves Namor retrieving the head of Dracula – but believe me when I say that’s pretty much it.  Ariel Olivetti’s art has the occasional nice panel of sealife, but all too often gives up on the backgrounds entirely, failing to get across even the idea of a ruined Atlantis.  The cast are lifeless and two dimensional, and there’s really nothing to it beyond some people chasing after a macguffin – there’s no sense of it being about anything else.  Truly lousy.

New Mutants #16 – The title characters don’t appear in this story, which is actually the origin of the demonic marines from the previous issue.  As it turns out, writer Zeb Wells has decided to tie up the long-forgotten dangling X-Factor subplot of what happened to the other babies who were used alongside Nate Summers in the magic ritual to open a portal to Limbo during the Inferno crossover.  Yes, in 1989.  Yes, it has been a long time since anyone mentioned that story, hasn’t it?  Fortunately, Wells knows better than to just pick up a 21-year-old plot; instead he uses it as a springboard for a new concept, with the US military using the hapless kids to open their own portal to Limbo and setting up a beachhead there.  As you can imagine, things don’t go entirely as hoped for.  It’s a clever little concept, with soldiers going on patrol in demon country and so forth – a nice, tongue-in-cheek piece of genre blending.  And thankfully, you don’t need to remember the original stories to get the point.

Shadowland: Power Man #1 – Fred Van Lante and Mahmud Asrar use the Shadowland crossover as a backdrop to launch their new version of Power Man.  And if you’re wondering why we need a new version of Power Man when the old one is still around… well, Luke Cage is one of those characters who’s drifted a long way from his roots.  Which leaves the way clear for another low-budget hero to take on the private-eye/superhero mantle that Luke left behind.  In some ways, this guy is basically Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass but with some actual powers to back it up.  A good debut issue, which manages to justify this guy’s use of the name, sell me on the idea that there’s a good series in it, and set him up as a likeable character in his own right.  A very solid debut.

Uncanny X-Men #527 – This came out last week, but it’s still never a great sign when I reach a book in the review pile and my first thought is “What happened in that one again?”  This is part two of “The Five Lights”, introducing another new mutant – Gabriel Cohuelho, who looks to be some sort of speedster.  It has to be said that we’re two issues into this introduction, two characters down, and Fraction hasn’t really been doing a great deal to establish them as strong personalities yet, which seems a missed opportunity.  (Something similar happened when the case of Generation X were introduced, come to think of it, though I vaguely recall that being something to do with the intro issues being written before a final decision had been taken about the kids’ personalities.)  The stronger material is in the various subplot scenes with Emma, Scott and Namor, where the characters seem more strongly defined.  Whilce Portacio’s art will no doubt continue to provoke a divided reaction; it does lean a little too heavily towards angular scratchiness for my taste, but I certainly prefer it to the overly polished work we get from Greg Land.

Wolverine: Weapon X #16 – An epilogue to “Second Coming”, as Wolverine goes on a final mission in memory of the late Nightcrawler: deliver a piano to the top of a mountain.  It’s actually more of an attempt to do something about religion.  Now, I vaguely recall Jason Aaron writing stories in the past where he tried to write Wolverine as Christian.  This time round, he seems to have accepted the party line that Wolverine is a non-believer (we’ll turn a blind eye to the fact that he’s actually been to the afterlife, because if you start thinking about these things too closely, the whole Marvel Universe falls apart – it’s one of these areas that calls for a dash of artistic licence and a huge dollop of goodwill).  Perhaps inevitably, it’s Kurt’s message that has to come out on top, in a way that I don’t find altogether persuasive.  But an issue of Wolverine hauling a piano up a mountain is a lovely idea.

X-Factor #208 – Soap opera abounds, as Rahne, Rictor, Shatterstar, Layla and M all squabble among themselves, while the team’s supposed mission of recovering a trinket from Pip the Troll pretty much gets relegated to a subplot.  And when I say soap opera, it really is full-blown, melodramatic soap opera, and decidedly over the top – but hey, that’s what the X-books traditionally do well, and Peter David knows how to make it entertaining.  A fun issue – and next time, we get Longshot in Las Vegas, a scene which surely can’t fail.

X-Men Forever 2 #6 – Speaking of shameless melodrama, the opening pages of this issue are so over the top they’re practically orbiting Mars.  But that’s part of the charm of Chris Claremont’s throwback X-Men book.  This issue, the Marauders launch yet another attempt to kidnap little Nathan – which is something that happened all the time back in the 80s.  The cute twist this time is that, thanks to the miracle of cloning, they’ve got a Sabretooth on their team too.  Something of a guilty pleasure but living up to the billing of a book that recaptures the Claremont era.

X-Men Legacy #239 – And finally… mistaking a runaway superhuman delinquent for a possible mutant, Rogue invites her back to Paras’ family home, where all sorts of disasters ensue.  And then the Children of the Vault show up for a fight.  But that’s next issue.  This issue, it’s more soap, and very nicely done – Mike Carey knows how to define a character quickly, and Clay Mann’s art has enough in the way of acting to back it up, as well as being entirely pleasant to look at in its own right.  I really do like the way Carey’s taking obscure background characters (like Paras and Alani) and making a virtue out of the fact that nobody else has really fleshed them out; they’re recognisable, but they’re also blank slates with which he can tell his own stories.

The podcast is here – let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, by email or by spelling it out in the letters of a falling, broken sign on the cover of Justice League of America.

EDIT: We’re also now streaming on Mixcloud – if you don’t like dealing with iTunes, or if Podomatic is being a hissy little thing again, you can listen to the show there: http://www.mixcloud.com/housetoastonish/astonish45/

If you’re one of the readers who was disappointed that I skipped the last WWE pay-per-view, well, you’ll be pleased to hear that my Summerslam preview is already up.

And now, comics!

Incidentally, one thing about American comics is that the adverts only change once a month.  Which is a shame, because that bloody Hulk advert is really starting to annoy me.  Not exactly conducive to mood, is it?

Mind you, they’ve evidently got pages to fill.  Picking the nearest book to hand, Daredevil #509 has eight pages of adverts during the story.   Two are for licensed Marvel merchandise.  The other six are house ads.  One of those six pages is an advert for Wolverine #1, which also appears on the inside front cover.  It’s clearly not a very cheerful time to be working in Marvel’s advertising department.  DC are doing rather better, thanks in large part to the generosity of NBC, who are very keen to make sure we’re all aware of the upcoming launch of The Event.  Needless to say, they just remind me of the Mitchell & Webb sketches.

But I digress.

Daredevil #509 – It’s rather odd seeing Roberto de la Torre’s art attached to the plot of a summer crossover.  At first glance Daredevil seems to be covering much the same ground as the Shadowland miniseries.  But in this book, they seem to be trying to focus more on Matt himself and characters directly linked to him, and playing down the horde of guest stars.  I think that’s for the best, since my main issue with Shadowland is that it’s the latest stage in the long-running saga of Daredevil going steadily mad; it’s his story, and it doesn’t really benefit from having a squad of unrelated characters show up to fight redshirt ninjas in the background.  But this series seems to be holding closer to what the original story ought to be about, with the only guest stars being Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Typhoid Mary (who’s a Daredevil character to start with, though the need to bring readers up to speed on her status quo means that the story has to pull up for a page so that she can recap Avengers: The Initiative).  So, great art, and a closer focus on the bit of the story that actually matters – this is better than the Shadowland mini.  I still think it’s a shame that the story has lost some of the ambiguity about how much Matt understands what’s going on, but on the whole this book is continuing to hold my interest in the plot.

Dark Wolverine #89 – Well, this is just dreadful.  It’s an extended fight scene, and not a particularly inventive one, and that’s literally it.  I’d write more, but what about?

Daytripper #9 – The penultimate issue of the series finally breaks from the format of the earlier chapters.  I won’t go into too much detail about how it does so, because I’d recommend breaking from the format.  But basically, this seems to be an attempt to pull together the threads of everything we saw in the previous issue – or rather, to jumble up elements from the moments that earlier issues focussed on, and turn them into a kind of mosaic of Bras’ life as a whole.  The really interesting thing, though, is that this issue could have worked quite happily as the series finale in its own right – yes, it would be a bit sentimental, but Daytripper is one of those rare books that manages to be sentimental without being mawkish.  But with another issue still to go, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba evidently aren’t resting at that; they’ve got more to add.  One of the best Vertigo books in years, this.

Shadowland: Blood on the Streets #1 – Misty Knight, the Shroud, Silver Sable and Paladin – together at last?!  I may have reservations about the number of guest stars that Shadowland is pouring into a Daredevil story, but at least the event is steering clear of the usual suspects and trying to do something with some of Marvel’s underused characters.  I’ve always quite liked the Shroud, although this story plays him more as a straight vigilante, when he used to be some sort of undercover superhero posing as a villain.  There’s also some good material with Misty Knight, playing off her understandable reluctance to accept that Matt has gone off the deep end.  And, as usual with Marvel events, the miniseries does seem to be relatively self-contained – it’s about the cast reacting to Matt’s bizarre ninja vigilante justice programme, not about them getting involved directly in the main story.  As against that, the cast do feel a bit random, and at this stage it’s far from obvious why they belong in the same story together.  Still, it’s a decent superhero/crime story in the margins of Shadowland, and it’s nice to see some of these characters getting an outing for a change.

Unwritten #16 – In which Tom’s dad explains everything, except he doesn’t, because the other characters don’t know what he’s talking about.  Plenty to pore over here, if you want to try and figure out what’s meant to be going on.  Now, the danger with a book like this is that it becomes all about the ideas and loses sight of the characters.  But Carey gets the balance right here – there’s a nice subplot with Lizzie Hexam discovering that she has far less clue what’s going on than she thought she did, and a really good ending which nicely wrongfoots the reader and gives us a satisfying moment which we weren’t expecting.  Always a book that I particularly look forward to reading.

X-Force: Sex & Violence #2 - This is a three-issue miniseries that bridges the gap until X-Force gets relaunched – though from the look of it, that’s more in terms of filling the schedule than advancing any plot.  It’s actually a Wolverine/Domino story where Domino has screwed over some bad guys, they’re out for revenge, and Wolverine has to help her out.  Now, X-Force under Craig Kyle and Chris Yost has not been a subtle title at the best of times, and this book is even less than subtle than its parent.  It’s so unsubtle, in fact, that it has the “Explicit Content” tag more commonly seen on Max books (presumably earned mainly by a two-page sex scene, which isn’t visually explicit so much as extremely vigorous).  That said, X-Force was also notable for taking everything painfully seriously, and this book unquestionably doesn’t.  It’s an unapologetically silly action book, and on that level, it works.  Gabriele Dell’Otto’s art is packed with energy, and the script is making no pretence of anything but blissful superficiality.  It’s got Razorfist in it, for heaven’s sake.  (Domino on Razorfist: “Wait!  Don’t kill him!  We need to insult him first!”  It’s that sort of book.)  Lightweight, to be sure, but knowingly and enthusiastically lightweight, and that’s fine by me.

X-Men #2 – In this issue: the X-Men fight some more vampires; Blade shows up to lend a hand and explain what happened in the prologue; and Jubilee’s turning into a vampire.  It’s not bad.  Victor Gischler has got the voices of the characters well, and the story is solidly put together.  Cyclops hits on the obvious plot point immediately, and as expected, we’re doing a story where the X-Men have to revive Dracula before the vampires overwhelm San Francisco.  That’s fine as far as it goes.  But we’ve kind of lost sight of the internal politics among the vampires that made the prologue issue interesting, and this doesn’t feel like it’s going to be anything more than a story where the X-Men fight a whole load of baddies – not really a strong enough concept to launch a new title with, though it’d be an acceptable few issues for a comic already well underway.  As for the art, I’m not sure this makes the best use of Paco Medina, who’s an artist most at home with bold lines and strong colours.  He’s also not very good with swords, which is unfortunate when you’ve got Blade in the book.  (Is he supposed to be slitting the vampires’ throats?  Decapitating them?  Might the point come across more clearly if he raised a sword above waist height?)  It’s a perfectly adequate X-Men story for the hardcore X-fans, but I don’t see this being the huge event that Marvel seem to paint it as.

X-Men Forever 2 #5 – The good thing about fortnightly titles is that if you get a story that isn’t particularly gripping – such as another go-round with the Morlocks – at least it’ll be over quickly.  And Claremont has indeed zipped through this one in only two issues, having indulged his fondness for PG-rated body horror with Masque temporarily mutilating some of the cast before putting them back together at the end.  The sort of story that feels like it’s there mainly to keep the book ticking over while some longer-term subplots develop in the background.  Somewhere in here, there’s a rather odd attempt to absolve Sabretooth of the Morlock Massacre by claiming that the Sabretooth in that story was a clone.  Apparently, Claremont feels that even the ultra-liberal X-Men wouldn’t open their doors to Sabretooth if he had that on his CV.  Not altogether sure I buy that, to be honest.  I know Claremont isn’t bound by the way the characters were developed by other writers after 1991, but even if you leave the Morlock Massacre aside, Sabretooth’s still a serial killer.  (Isn’t he?)  Anyway… not a story I was particularly enthralled by, but hey, it’s two issues.

Summerslam is traditionally one of the WWE’s big shows of the year (in the second tier after Wrestlemania, along with Royal Rumble in January and Survivor Series in the autumn).  This is really is just a hangover from the days when there were only four PPVs a year, but the name still has a certain added credibility – not least because the company usually puts a bit more effort into these shows.

This year, it’s something of a one match show.  But it’s a match that they’ve been building to for months, in a storyline which has dominated Raw for much of that time.  And now, for the first time, it’s a leading to match.  All too often, the WWE loses its nerve with this sort of long-term build, but this time they’ve got it right, and in theory at least, that ought to result in a lot of interest for this show.  Whether the match will be any good… well, that’s more of an unknown factor.  But unusually, that might even add to the curiosity here.

1.  14-man elimination tag team match: The Nexus (Wade Barrett, Justin Gabriel, David Otunga, Skip Sheffield, Heath Slater, Michael Tarver and Darren Young)  v. Team WWE (John Cena, Chris Jericho, Edge, Bret Hart, R-Truth, John Morrison and ???). For once, the obvious main event is not a title match, and not even a singles match.  It’s a 14-man tag.

The Nexus are the wrestlers who appeared as “rookies” in the first series of NXT, the WWE’s C-show.  NXT is an odd show that doesn’t really work.  It does at least start with the right idea: the previous C-show, ECW, was just the same thing as Raw and Smackdown, only at half the length and with a fraction of the star power.  Unofficially it was the starting point for new wrestlers, but in practice it was just more of the same, from a company that was already producing four hours of higher-priority television every week.

So the idea of NXT was to do a faux reality show – a concept they haven’t executed particularly well, because the writers don’t have time to produce that sort of script, and the wrestlers don’t have the talent to pull them off anyway.  In theory, each “season” of NXT involves eight rookie wrestlers, each being mentored by an established wrestler (which adds a bit of star power to the show, and also provides a dumping ground for midcarders who don’t have a storyline at the moment).  The rookies have wrestling matches of variable quality, and appear in other competition segments which are generally unwatchably excruciating.  And over time, through a process of elimination the mechanics of which are not wholly transparent, one wrestler is left and becomes the winner.

It’s not a very good show, because to do it properly would involve producing something like a cross between Ultimate Fighter and The Hills, and the company simply isn’t prepared to throw that much effort at it.  It also goes against a long-standing maxim of professional wrestling in America, which is that if you want to make a star, you introduce him as a star, and have him beats of people – you don’t introduce him as one of eight interchangeable losers and then spend four months beating home their inferiority by telling us that it’s a huge shock if they manage to pull off a win over an established wrestler.  (In fairness, in Japan they do it differently.  Wrestlers over there will usually start as outmatched rookies and work their way slowly up the card.  But conventional wisdom says it doesn’t work in America.  If NXT was being done better, we might be able to test the theory.)

So… the first “season” of NXT – there are no actual season breaks, but the WWE likes to call them seasons anyway – ended with Wade Barrett winning the contest.  And then, a week or so later, all eight rookies showed up at the end of an episode of Raw to demolish the set and kill everyone in sight.  And more or less, that’s what they’ve been doing ever since – attacking in a swarm at the end of main events, annihilating people by weight of numbers, and generally  acting like nihilist wreckers.  Quite why they’re so angry – other than a general irritation at the way they were treated on NXT – remains a bit vague, although they occasionally suggest that they have a masterplan which will become clear in due course.  (Cynics would say that this means their masterplan will be revealed if and when the writers figure out what it is.)

The storyline took a knock at the outset when the WWE fired Bryan Danielson, the best wrestler of the bunch, ostensibly for choking out the ring announcer with a tie during the group’s first attack.  Broadly speaking, the suggestion seems to be that the WWE got into some trouble with their sponsors for not sticking to their stated PG rating, and Danielson may have been the fall guy.  He’ll probably be back in the end.

Meanwhile, the story continues with the remaining seven rookies, now calling themselves the Nexus, and with Barrett (who can certainly talk) acting as their leader. They attack people, they talk a lot, they hardly ever wrestle.  Barrett’s had a couple of brief matches, but otherwise the only official Nexus match saw them taking on seven lower-card guys and killing them quickly.  Partly this is because they’re building up the first proper Nexus match as a big thing.  Partly it’s because most of the Nexus really are rookies, and getting them to wrestle risks spoiling the mystique.  Tonight, we will find out how much the WWE have to worry about there.

Following several weeks of this sort of thing, John Cena has assembled a team of established WWE stars to take on the group.  And that’s our match for tonight.

The psychology is simple.  The Nexus are rookies.  A bunch of established wrestlers, in a fair fight, ought to win.  Except the WWE team are a mixture of heels and babyfaces, and Cena has pretty quickly discovered that being the team leader is a bit like herding cats.  The two heel members, Edge and Jericho, are only there out of a grudging sense of mutual self-interest, and won’t do as they’re told.  Morrison and R-Truth, who are midcard babyfaces, are squabbling for unrelated reasons.  Retired wrestler Bret Hart is reliable in theory, but realistically we all know he’s not going to be doing a great deal in his condition.  And the Great Khali, who was supposed to be in the final slot, was taken out by the Nexus last week, leaving the WWE side a man down.

So you’ve got a team rookies who are at least on the same side, versus a bunch of main event wrestlers who hate one another.  Can Cena’s team get their act together long enough to finally beat these guys, or are the Nexus going to get a rather big win over Raw’s elite?

It’s a solid story, and it also means there’s plenty of scope to play up storyline aspects and work around the limitations of the less experienced Nexus members – some of whom, one can’t help suspecting, are unlikely to see the main event again once this storyline is complete.  In theory, Cena, Edge, Jericho, Morrison and R-Truth ought to be good enough to get a decent match out of these guys as long as it’s reasonably well rehearsed.

Barrett’s solid, even if he doesn’t feel like a main event singles wrestler yet.  Gabriel and Slater are promising.  Sheffield has something to offer as a big man.  David Otunga was hired because he’s married to Jennifer Hudson, and has yet to convincingly demonstrate any other reason to keep him around.  Darren Young is not very impressive either, though it’s only fair to acknowledge that John Morrison was bloody awful at that stage in his career, and he improved enormously over the years.  Michael Tarver is pretty abysmal, but has been okay in this angle since they can hide him in the crowd.

The match will be a challenge for the more experienced wrestlers on the other side, but there’s something there to work with.  I think they’ll be able to pull it off.

There are two main storyline questions going into this match.  First, who (if anyone) takes the seventh slot on Cena’s team?  They’re hinting at the Miz, the United States champion, but that would be a third heel on an already unstable team.  Miz’s main motivation for helping out seems to be that he likes the ego boost from knowing that main event babyfaces need his help – which is actually quite in character for him.  And, as a wrestler heading to the main event, he would make sense.

Second, who wins and why?  This story is going well, so they don’t want to end it just yet.  If so, Nexus probably win.  And there are several ways of doing that.  Nexus could just win, if they really want to keep them incredibly strong.  (Don’t hold your breath.)  The Raw team could splinter down face/heel lines.  Or one of the overlooked Raw wrestlers could switch sides.  Cena and Hart make no sense for plot reasons, and it’s not a shock if Edge or Jericho do it, so the best candidates are the two midcard team members, Morrison and R-Truth, who seem to be there to make the numbers on Cena’s team.  Either would potentially work, but Morrison is a better bet.  He’s struggled as a babyface with his contrived “Jim Morrison” gimmick, and a high-profile heel turn would reinvigorate his act.

Also on this show…

2.  WWE Title: Sheamus v. Randy Orton. Sheamus is the defending heel champion here, and Orton – still settling into his role as an antihero babyface – is the latest challenger.  This is basically just a straight wrestling match.  There’s a stipulation that Orton doesn’t get a rematch if he loses, and that anyone who interferes in the match gets suspended (not a given, in the wonderful world of professional wrestling).  But basically, that just means “no, honest, we’re going to have the match and the Nexus aren’t going to run in after five minutes.”

They’ve done some decent interview work to build up the match, but there’s no real storyline as such, and it’s simply two main event guys fighting.  These guys are usually solid, though, and I’d expect it to be good.  A win for Orton wouldn’t entirely surprise me, because the Miz is still hanging around with the “Money in the Bank” title shot that he won a while ago.  Since the “Money in the Bank” title shot can be cashed in at any time, it’s basically an excuse to ambush the champion, and Miz, as a heel, pretty much needs a babyface champion to screw.  (For that matter, Wade Barrett is still owed a title shot, and it doesn’t really make sense for him to challenge Sheamus.  But I expect they’ll hold that match off for a bit, or add him to a three-way.)

My guess would be that either Sheamus just retains, or Orton wins and Miz instantly snatches the title from him (or at least tries, and does enough to set up a rematch next month where he wins the title legitimately).  For lack of babyface challengers, if nothing else, Sheamus feels like he has to be a transitional champion who loses the belt sooner rather than later.

3.  World Heavyweight Title: Kane v. Rey Mysterio. Smackdown’s world title match.  Kane got the title last month at the “Money in the Bank” show, when he won the Smackdown title shot and ambushed Mysterio after a successful title defence.  This is Mysterio’s rematch.

Kane is a surprise choice for world champion, because he last held any version of the world title for about a day in the late nineties, and he long since settled down to an upper-midcard role.  But he’s in the main Smackdown storyline at the moment – in which he’s supposedly trying to identify the mysterious attacker who left his brother, the Undertaker, in a coma.  Kane being a deranged maniac, his idea of detective work is to hit people until they confess.  Kane says that Mysterio did it.  Mysterio says Kane did it himself, and is just covering his tracks.  Nobody really cares.  It’s a storyline that hasn’t taken off, but they’re committed to it now.  Besides, the Undertaker will be back sooner or later, so they’ve got to follow through with the story.

I don’t expect wonders from this – Mysterio has a fairly standard “little man versus big man” match, and I think that’s what we’ll get.  I’d expect Kane to retain here, simply because they’re obviously building to Kane vs Undertaker, and the next PPV is Night of Champions, where very match has to be a title defence.  So one of them needs to hold a title belt.  The other possibility is that Undertaker shows up and costs Kane the title, but I don’t see that happening unless they’ve lost faith in the storyline.

4.  Intercontinental Title: Dolph Ziggler v. Kofi Kingston. The Intercontinental Title is Smackdown’s secondary title.  Ziggler is a midcard heel who’s been trying to win the belt for ages, and for one reason or another – often involving backstage politics or the knock-on effects of changes to other stories – he’s always fallen a little bit short.  Finally, he managed to win the damn thing last week, and this is Kingston’s rematch.  It’s probably time to move Kingston on to something else; Ziggler really desperately needs the credibility of holding the thing for a while now that he’s finally got it; and so logic says Ziggler is winning.  The match ought to be above average.

5.  Handicap match: The Big Show v. the Straight Edge Society (CM Punk, Luke Gallows & Joey Mercury). Well.  This is a three-on-one match with a giant babyface taking on CM Punk and both of his henchmen.  Punk’s been wandering around with his arm in a sling for a while now, and to be honest, I’m a little vague as to whether he’s actually going to be wrestling in this match.  If Punk does participate, then the heels really have to win.  Punk is one of the top heels on Smackdown, and if he can’t beat the number 2 babyface in a three-on-one handicap match, well, he’s not much of a bad guy, is he?  If Punk doesn’t wrestle… well, to be honest, I’d still be inclined to keep the Straight Edge Society strong by letting them beat the Big Show two-on-one, but I suspect that’s not the way the WWE would see things.  My bet: Punk doesn’t participate, Big Show wins, match isn’t very good.

6.  Divas Title: Alicia Fox v. Melina. The Raw women’s title.  Melina is a babyface just back from injury, so conventional wisdom says that either she wins here, or she comes very close indeed and gets thwarted by blatant cheating.  This will be a schedule-filler used to give the crowd a break between two of the major matches, and it won’t be very good.

Worth buying? Depends how interested you are in the Nexus storyline, because the undercard isn’t spectacular, and the Nexus match will be very much a storyline thing rather than a wrestling showcase.  I am interested to see where the Nexus match is going, and I’ll probably be buying it.

The podcast is here – let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on the side of a blimp during the Superbowl.

This week’s number 1 looks to be in a similar vein.  As the lead single from an album, it has the advantage of pre-release hype on its side (something that doesn’t work once the album is out, and the track is available for download while it’s being promoted).  And according to the midweek charts, it will be dropping to number four tomorrow.  Perhaps lower.

The single in question is “Beautiful Monster” by Ne-Yo.

One of those competent but instantly forgettable records that I can stare at for a week without identifying any features worthy of comment.  I can only assume that either there’s a lot of Ne-Yo fans out there who’ve been on tenterhooks for his first single as a lead artist since 2008, or there really is a massive demand right now for Yet More Of This Sort Of Thing.  The fact that it’s dropping out of the top three in its second week tends to suggest the former.

This is Ne-Yo’s seventh UK hit as a lead artist – if you count his featured artist credits, he gets up to ten.  It’s his third number 1, following “So Sick” in 2006  (hey, remember when everyone was doing videos in letterbox format with landscapes in the background?), and “Closer” in 2008.  Both of which, for my money, were much better singles, and certainly more memorable ones.

Anyhow.  It’s another very quiet week for new releases, with only three other singles making the chart.

• “Choices” by the Hoosiers at number 11.  The Hoosiers are a self-consciously quirky power pop trio who had three hits in 2007/8, and after an extended gap, this is the lead single from their second album.  They’ve discovered an 80s influence and have made a video that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the song (which, you’ll be surprised to hear, has nothing to do with making adverts in Japan and fighting ninjas).  Unfortunately it’s not embeddable, but oh well.  The song itself is really growing on me.  Their biggest hit remains “Goodbye Mr A”, which reached number 4 in 2007 despite being a song about how Steve Ditko’s creator-owned work was relatively unsuccessful due to its somewhat preachy qualities.  You think I’m kidding?  I’m not kidding.




• “Gold Dust” by DJ Fresh at number 24.  Top 40 debut for a drum and bass DJ who’s been around for years, and scraped the lower end of the top 75 a few times circa 2003.  He’s British, but try telling the video director that.

• And finally, “Oh No” by Marina and the Diamonds at number 38 – her third and smallest hit.  Melodramatic to put it mildly, but it’s a got a great chorus.  Not sure about the dayglow video at all.

But here’s some stuff which did come out this week…

Amazing Spider-Man #639 – Part two of “One Moment In Time”, the story that isn’t so much “because you demanded it” as “because it was an unavoidable necessity which we’ve put off for as long as we could.”  There’s no more interpolated reprint material this time – part one already explained where the wedding story got changed, and this issue has the tougher job of explaining why Peter and Mary Jane ended up living together regardless.  (Incidentally, while I can understand the desire to preserve as many stories in continuity as possible, was it really necessary to have them go on the honeymoon anyway, simply to preserve the canonicity of Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #7 in modified form?)  The argument goes something like this: Mary Jane realises that something Spider-Man-related stopped Peter from showing up at the church, and forgives that, but decides that she doesn’t want to have children with Peter if their life is going to be like this, and therefore she doesn’t need to marry him.  You can practically hear the plot creak under the weight of accommodating an enormous retcon with minimal disturbance to history, and there’s simply no way of taking this story as anything other than an exercise in remedial continuity.  You can of course make a case for this story as a sacrifice to the greater good of the series – but wouldn’t it have been simpler just to declare that they never decided to get married in the first place, particularly given that it was a last-minute development shoehorned into the series to achieve consistency with the newspaper strip?  Granted, that wouldn’t make for a dramatic story… but with the strings so clearly visible, neither does this.

Casanova #2 – We’re still in the reprints of the original series here, which the Icon book is covering two to an issue.  Having originally been intended for reading in smaller chunks, it’s incredibly dense, to the point of sometimes seeming a bit rushed, but with a healthy sense of deadpan lunacy to it.  My reservation about the first issue was whether there was actually much of a story behind it all, but issue #2 goes a long way to answering that point; the emotional core of the thing is evidently about Casanova being yanked to a parallel timeline and having the opportunity to revisit family relationships that he screwed up the first time round.  I still suspect it would be a stronger book for slowing up just a little bit, but that’s a hangover of the format of the original series.

Murderland #1 – One of those books that leaves you mainly thinking “What the hell was that?”  Fortunately, I suspect that’s largely what Stephen Scot and David Hahn were going for.  As I recall, I ordered this book on the strength of Hahn’s name.  The solicitation is a bit murky as to what the book’s about, and frankly, even after reading the thing, I’m not quite sure how to describe it.  There’s a guy calling himself Arabber who’s got some sort of unspecified mission.  There’s a woman called Method who seems to play roles for nefarious reasons.  There’s a general sense that the ground rules aren’t being explained to us and the series isn’t waiting for us to catch up.  There’s plenty of nonchalant violence and deadpan black comedy.  There’s a flip back cover that seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the comic inside.  And I honestly still haven’t got much of a clue about what it’s about.  But, unlike a lot of mystifying first issues, it does make sure that the actual events are clear enough – it’s the explanation for them that’s hard to make sense of.  Thoroughly odd and partially impenetrable, but intriguing nonetheless.

New Mutants Forever #1 – The expansion of the Insert Name Here Forever franchise continues, with Chris Claremont telling a story that he might have done in the eighties had he not left New Mutants with issue #52 or so.  Just to be clear, this has no story connection whatsoever with Claremont’s X-Men Forever (because he left New Mutants several years earlier, and so the deviation point is different).  As New Mutants was a smoother handover, there’s perhaps less interest in this one as a premise – and it’s not altogether encouraging when the first page, which seems to have a different letterer from the rest of the book, manages to mis-spell the names of two of the main characters.

Anyway, Claremont has chosen to go back to the old and abandoned storyline of Selene having plans for Nova Roma, which somehow or other involved her granddaughter Amara.  This subplot had been drifting around for a while, and survived a couple of years into the Louise Simonson run, before being utterly forgotten about by everyone.  Any hope of it being resolved hit the buffers when the whole concept of Nova Roma was dismantled in an offhand retcon in an issue of New Warriors.  So at least this is a story with potential for exhuming.

What we get in the first issue… is the New Mutants being taken by Magneto to visit their new allies in the Hellfire Club.  Sunspot, Warlock and Karma are all gone, for reasons that aren’t really explained clearly.  (If you don’t know, Karma was written out around this time, and Sunspot and Warlock are off appearing in the Fallen Angels miniseries – but the story seems to assume you know all this.)  A bunch of mysterious baddies attack who have their own interest in Nova Roma and, yes, the fight ensues.

It does give some indication of what New Mutants might have done if Claremont had followed up on the direction he was pursuing when he left, an alliance between the X-Men and the Hellfire Club that never really got off the ground.  And Claremont does slip neatly enough back into writing the characters.  In many ways it feels truer to the concept than X-Men Forever, which takes advantage of being in its own universe to tell stories that Claremont would never have been allowed to do in 1991, no matter how sympathetic his editor.  On the other hand, it’s Nova Roma, which was never one of the more successful New Mutants concepts; and so far it’s basically a lot of unexplained fighting.  Mind you, since the Hellfire Club are in it, presumably we get to see the Hellions later on, and Claremont was always great with them…

Rage of Thor – A one-shot by Peter Milligan and Mico Suayan, set way back when in the middle ages, from the look of it.  I forget whether this is a sequel to another one-shot, but the basic idea is that Thor has stormed out of Asgard after yet another argument with dad, and has set up a life as a Norse farmer.  Needless to say, that isn’t going to last.  There’s quite an interesting idea here about the essential shallowness of the “Drink!  Fight!  Girls!” aspect of Asgard’s paradise, and how Thor’s stuck with it because he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go.  But it’s more a comment on the mythological version of Asgard than Marvel’s sanitised version, which is a glitch; and the character arc is rather familiar, which is more of a problem.

Shadowland #2 – So it’s the street level heroes (er, plus Spider-Man) versus Daredevil and his supporting cast, and clearly the idea is that Daredevil is going mad.  Fine as far as it goes, and it’s quite nice to see these characters get a story that’s more or less on their level (though the Ghost Rider seems decidedly out of place here).  I can’t help feeling, though, that the story is being done more effectively in Daredevil’s own title, where there’s a bit more ambiguity about how clearly Daredevil understands that he’s being manipulated.  Here, it seems pretty clear that he’s just lost it, and that a bunch of characters from outside the book are going to have to take him down… and I can’t help thinking I’d rather have seen this story stay within Daredevil‘s own cast.  Mind you, by the standards of crossover minis it’s perfectly decent, not least because it’s got a character-driven story at its core.

Spitfire #1 – Another of the “Women of Marvel” one-shots, but this one has the advantage of giving Paul Cornell an opportunity to pick up on the story he was doing with Spitfire in the cancelled MI-13 series.  Spitfire and Blade get sent to New York to go after a vampire who seems to be causing trouble largely because she’s very old and has nothing better to do.  It’s trying to set up the idea that Spitfire’s troubled by the thought that she might go the same way over time, even though she’s in control of her vampirism right now.  Fair enough as a way of explaining why it’s still a concern to her and not just a generic background angst point, I guess.  I quite like the relationship Cornell has set up between Spitfire and Blade, who seems willing to overlook the fact that Spitfire’s a vampire; but I can’t help feeling Blade’s character needed a bit more work to get to this point, and we’ve ended up skipping to the relationship before it was really plausible.

And the winner this week… is “All Time Low” by the Wanted.

The Wanted are – and here are some words I haven’t had to use in ages – a manufactured boy band.  Look at them there in the video, sensitive yet non-threatening.

And they’re quite open about being manufactured.  They were formed by audition, after their record company figured that, what with the success of JLS, there surely had to be a gap in the market for a boy band.

A fair point, to be honest.  It’s been a while; the statute of limitations must have expired.  What was the last number 1 single from a manufactured boy band?  JLS don’t strictly count, because they aren’t manufactured – they showed up at the X-Factor auditions already formed.  The current incarnation of Take That doesn’t really count either; they’re hardly boys any more.  In fact, by my reckoning, you’ve got to go back to 2007 and the tail-end of McFly’s career, with the double A-side “Baby’s Coming Back”/“Transylvania”.

As for the song… well, it’s surprisingly passable.  Somebody’s clearly put some effort into giving the band a distinctive debut single instead of going to the usual collection of drippy ballads that tend to plague Anglo-Irish boy bands, and all the better for it.  (Mind you, checking their YouTube channel, I see they’re still following the traditional route of playing the school assembly circuit.  They’ve also, somewhat more unusually, posted a lo-fi video of them singing the B-side – a cover of “Fight for this Love” – in what looks like a hotel room, which at least confirms that they can hit a note without the benefit of autotune.)

This week’s handful of other new entries:-

• “Billionaire” by Travie McCoy featuring Bruno Mars, at number 3.  Summery, I’ll give it that.  Bruno Mars also appeared on B.o.B.’s number one “Nothin’ On You” in April.  Travie McCoy is the frontman of Gym Class Heroes, who had three hits back in 2007-8.  And just to prove that nobody can be bothered making their own backing tracks these days, it’s actually based on sample from the 1996 single “Santeria” by Sublime, because clearing a sample is apparently less effort than strumming your own guitar.
• “Club Can’t Handle Me” by Flo Rida featuring David Guetta, at number 5.  Eighth hit for Flo Rida, ninth for the seemingly ubiquitous Guetta. This is from the soundtrack to Step Up 3D, and it may have lost sales due to a screw-up at the start of the week when iTunes didn’t have it available for individual download.  (A karaoke version was in danger of charting at one point.)  It sounds exactly like you’d expect a Flo Rida featuring David Guetta single to sound.
• “One (Your Name)” by the Swedish House Mafia featuring Pharrell at number 7.  Very, very odd video.  (Especially if you stick with it to the end, by which point it gets downright dark.)

The Swedish House Mafia, commendably committed to truth in advertising, are indeed three leading Swedish DJs.  Specifically, they’re Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso.  (Eric Prydz used to be a member, but he’s got nothing to do with this particular single.)  This is the first time they’ve charted as a group, but Axwell reached number 6 in 2007 with “I Found U”, and Angello made number 11 last year with a cover of “Show Me Love”.  Angello and Ingrosso have also previously recorded as Buy Now!, who narrowly missed the top 40 with oddities like “Body Crash”.

Oh yes, Pharrell Williams… this is his eleventh solo credit, though the last one was way back in 2006.

• Finally, “I Need Air” by Magnetic Man featuring Angela Hunte at number 10.  Debut for a dubstep group composed of three producers who, so far as I know, have never charted individually either.  This is pretty good, actually. Unusually for a dance record, it’s a live video (the actual single is a bit less echoey).

The podcast is here – let us know what you think in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or using your indoor voice.