House to Astonish – Live!
We’ve been teasing a big announcement for a while on Twitter, and it’s time to unveil what we’ve been up to.
We’re incredibly pleased and proud to announce our first live show, on 31 May, in aid of Alzheimer’s Scotland.
Join me and Paul at City2, downstairs at the City Cafe, Edinburgh, for the recording of a very special episode We’ll be discussing the great and the good (and the not so good) of the world of comic books and answer the burning questions of the day. There will be a live Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and possibly even special guests from the world of comics…
PLUS: How much do you REALLY know about comics? Do you know your Beetle and Booster from your Maggie and Hopey? Can you tell a New Warrior from a New Teen Titan? And how many Robins have there been anyway? Test your knowledge out with the House to Astonish Comics Quiz, and be in with a chance to win some sweet comics and graphic novels.
Tickets are £12, which includes admission to the live House to Astonish podcast, entry to the Comics Quiz and a buffet, and all profits from the sale of tickets will be donated to Alzheimer’s Scotland. Tickets are available to purchase here.
We really hope you’ll be able to join us, and whether you are or not, please spread the word!
House to Astonish Episode 122
We’ve got a whole load of great chat for you this time round, with discussion of DC’s top brass moving to California, Oni press’s upcoming projects, the Harley Quinn SDCC one-shot and the new Star-Spangled War Stories series, as well as the June solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of Daredevil, Sovereign and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe goes to Hell’s kitchen. All this plus fakeaunches, Paper and Staples magazine and kicking Hitler in the nuts.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
We’ve also got a big announcement, but that’s for its own post…
X-Men #7-12 – “Muertas”
“Muertas” is a storyline that starts off strongly and ends up as a bit of a mess all round.
Even the titling suggests confusion. Issue #7 clearly gives the title as “Muertas, part 1 of 6″. But issue #10 – sorry, “issue #10.NOW” – which ought to be “Muertas, part 4″, is instead titled as “Ghosts, part 1″, despite being manifestly a middle chapter, apparently for no reason other than to justify the dodgy promotion.
It starts with a decent idea, though. Ana Cortes, a rich Colombian teenager, gets hold of the disembodied consciousness of Lady Deathstrike. Before anyone asks, I couldn’t remember where she died either, and an explanation might not have gone amiss. (As best I can figure, it’s meant to be Uncanny X-Force #5.1, where she escaped X-Force by uploading her consciousness to the internet – she’s appeared elsewhere since, but if she’s a downloaded consciousness these days, I guess there’s no reason why there can’t be several of her.)
Charts – 16 March 2014
Since the UK music industry likes promoting records for weeks before they’re released, but doesn’t much care for promoting records over Christmas or the early new year, it’s round about this time that we start seeing a deluge of new releases. And lo and behold, there’s a lot of very forgettable stuff out this week…
39. One Direction – “Midnight Memories”
X-Men Legacy #300 – “ForgetMeNot”
Marvel has long viewed numbers as less a counting system and more a promotional opportunity, and here we have a prime example of that – a comic labelled as X-Men Legacy #300, devoted to celebrating ninety-three fabulous issues of X-Men Legacy.
Bizarre as it may seem today, the series that became X-Men Legacy started off back in 1991 as X-Men vol 2, spent many years as the flagship of the line, and changes its name to New X-Men for a while in order to play host to the Grant Morrison run. But then it became X-Men Legacy, which was essentially a vehicle for solo series to be branded under the X-Men name.
Charts – 9 March 2014
House to Astonish Episode 121
I’ve got a cold but comics doesn’t stand still while people blow their noses, so we’re soldiering on with a fresh new episode of House to Astonish. This time round, we talk about the Comixology hack; Archie’s new CCO (and new writer); Boom!’s new director and their Big Trouble in Little China series; the IDW Cartoon Network crossover; the new writers of Thunderbolts; Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore’s Leaving Megalopolis moving to Dark Horse; Titan’s new Doctor Who ongoing series; Skottie Young’s Rocket Raccoon; the Stan & Sharon Sakai benefit auctions (which are here) and Eric Stephenson’s speech to ComicsPRO. We’ve also got reviews of Moon Knight, Evil Empire and The Auteur, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is neither swings nor roundabouts. All this plus Satanism With Sabrina, rapper-hunting robots and the Man of a Thousand Handles.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
And hey, spring is coming in – what better way to mark that than with a House to Astonish t-shirt from our Spring Collection? It’s the same as our Winter Collection but please don’t tell anyone.
Charts – 2 March 2014
A quiet week for new releases, coupled with a surprise number 1 that breaks a few records…
35. Kid Ink featuring Chris Brown – “Show Me”
Rebounding from last week’s number 75 to get a third run in the top 40. Not sure what’s going on here. It’s certainly hung around a while for a song that never made it above 23.
26. Starship – “We Built This City”
Wolverine and the X-Men #42 – “Graduated?”
The end of the road, then. It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on Wolverine and the X-Men, which wraps up Jason Aaron’s run with two epilogue issues, in advance of next week’s (!) relaunch with Latour and Asrar.
While Aaron may be sticking around over on Amazing X-Men, which shares a similarly relaxed attitude to sanity, this is more than just creator reshuffling. Despite its name, Wolverine and the X-Men was never really about Wolverine and the X-Men at all. It was about the school. Marvel finally got a book about the trainees to work – albeit by the slightly questionable device of marketing it as something else. Unsurprisingly, the final issue goes for the ever popular graduation day theme – an excellent way of marking a symbolic turning point for some of the characters while leaving the school in place to grind happily on for the next creative team.
