Charts – 6 September 2024
We’re still marooned in the doldrums.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Taste”
Two weeks – and again, it heads up an all-Sabrina top three, with “Please Please Please” at number 2 and “Espresso” at number 3. The album “Short N’ Sweet” drops to 2.
31. Coldplay – “We Pray”
Your highest new entry, climbing from number 44. I realise there’s a bunch of “featuring” credits on the video, but the official chart credit is just for Coldplay. This is the second single from their current album “Moon Music”. It’s an odd track – it’s one of the more interesting Coldplay tracks I’ve heard in a while, but Chris Martin’s voice somehow makes it sound like Maroon 5. Still, two top 40 hits from an album at this point in their career is a good result.
The X-Axis – w/c 2 September 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #13. By Alex Paknadel, Diógenes Neves, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. So, yeah, I just went on Marvel Unlimited to re-read this and they’ve added the entire run of CrossGen’s Mystic. Didn’t see that coming. Apparently they’ve just put out an omnibus, but I think it’s the first time they’ve added any CrossGen material.
Anyway, this is part 1 of a Magneto story set in Merle. That’s an interesting call in itself, because X-Men has mostly had Magneto hang around on the fringes in his floating chair trying to look ominous. But From the Ashes winds up being the first book to expand on that. The fact that he can’t walk was so strongly implied that it doesn’t really count as a reveal (and isn’t treated as one), but apparently he’s also outright depowered. The story leaves it to X-Men to cover how all that happened, so there really isn’t any new information that X-Men won’t cover in due course. But it’s still a bit of a surprise to see it show up here first.
Exceptional X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #1
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Kate Pryde has retired as a superhero and is working in a bar called Lulu’s Tavern in Bridgeport, a district of Chicago. According to Wikipedia, Bridgeport used to have a reputation for racial intolerance but is now one of Chicago’s most diverse areas. We saw Lulu’s Tavern before in X-Men #35.
Kate is depressed, anxious or both. There are a couple of points in the issue where she seems to break the fourth wall, though you could rationalise that she’s talking to herself out loud if you want. She’s taking the fall of Krakoa badly. While she describes Krakoa as her home “sort of”, presumably referencing her semi-detached status as the one mutant who couldn’t use the gates, she evidently feels it as a loss. She worries that the more hubristic aspects of the Krakoan age are going to come back to bite the mutants now, and she’s appalled by her dark-and-violent phase as Shadowkat in Gerry Duggan’s X-Men. Being around other mutants strikes her as living in “the shattered remains of the life I knew”, and since she can pass for human, she’s going to drop out of all that, live a normal life, and try not to think about it.
Charts – 30 August 2024
I’m starting to think that the state of the singles chart might be less than healthy.
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Taste”
Yeah, that opening caption isn’t kidding about the violence. It’s cartoon violence but it does merit a parental warning when it comes from a mainstream pop act. Anyway, Sabrina Carpenter’s album “Short N’ Sweet” is out this week and enters at number 1. To put in context what a good year this has been for her career, this is her sixth studio album and her first to even make the albums top 40. Granted, some of those records were made for Disney, but 2022’s “Emails I Can’t Send” was on Island, and it only got to number 41.
A surge of interest in the previous singles is strong enough to cancel the downweighting rule (I think you need to increase sales/streams by something like 25% week on week), and so “Please Please Please” is at number 2 and “Espresso” is at number 3. Clean sweeps of the top 3 have happened before, but rarely, since in practice it wasn’t possible until the digital age. Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles have all done it.
The X-Axis – 26 August 2024
X-MEN: FROM THE ASHES INFINITY COMIC #12. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Arthur Hesli & Clayton Cowles. Some From the Ashes arcs have been rather obviously designed to yank a character into a new status quo so that a main line title doesn’t have to waste time on it. The Omega Red arc isn’t one of those, and turns out to be just a nice little story about a violent murderer returning to the miserable town where he grew up. There’s some low-level villainy for him to deal with but it’s more of a character and tone piece than anything else. I’m all for trying to round out Omega Red, who’s a very one-dimensional character with rather convoluted powers – honestly, I’ve never really understood what links the tentacles, the death spores and everything else about him. A perfectly fine little story designed to flesh him out a bit, without actually toning him down too much.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE INFINITY COMIC #5. By Tom Bloom, Guillermo Sana, Java Tartaglia & Joe Sabino. It’s a middle chapter of an Infinity Comic and so there’s not much to add to what I’ve said before: it’s a small town body horror story, pleasingly low key and well executed. Certainly at the high end of the range for Infinity Comics and worth a look if you have a subscription. (And if you don’t… well, Unlimited is very good value for the archives and for almost the whole Marvel line on a three month delay, but the Infinity Comics exclusives are at best in the “nice to have” category, rather than being a reason to sign up in themselves.)
NYX #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NYX vol 2 #2
Writers: Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly
Artist: Francesco Mortarino
Colour artist: Raúl Angulo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Annalise Bissa
THE CORE CAST:
Wolverine (Laura) gets the spotlight in this issue. She’s investigating the disappearance of thirty mostly homeless mutants over a few days (though the one we see at the start of the issue seems quite well dressed). As it turns out, they’re all being enlisted voluntarily by Local, of whom more below.
Laura narrates the issue and spends a lot of it reminiscing about Kiden Nixon, one of the main characters from the original NYX series. We hear so much about Kiden in this issue that it seems likely she’ll be showing up in the end. So far as I can see, Kiden hasn’t appeared since an X-23 one-shot in 2010 – at that point she was living on the streets, but that was 15 years ago, so who knows where she is now.
Laura is living in a dilapidated building in East Harlem, which is presumably why Kiden is on her mind. Back in the original NYX, Laura is a teenage prostitute; she kills a client who draws a knife on her, and meets Kiden shortly after. Her pimp then comes after her, and she kills him. Honestly, she doesn’t do a great deal more than that – the first run is only seven issues long, focusses on Kiden, and spends most of its time just introducing the cast. They move into Bobby Soul’s apartment at the end of the series, and most of Laura’s actual friendship with Kiden presumably takes place off panel after NYX #7 and before Laura shows up in Uncanny X-Men (which, due to insane delays on NYX, had actually happened before NYX finished). So basically, this friendship was always implied more than actually depicted.
X-Force #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 7 #2
“Igubu Lika-Anansi”
Writer: Geoffrey Thorne
Artist: Marcus To
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
As I said at the beginning of the “From the Ashes” era, I’m not necessarily planning to do annotations for all ongoing titles – we’ll see how the second-tier books are looking after the first few issues.
X-FORCE:
Forge helpfully illustrates the limitations of his powers by confidently building a device that will allow X-Force’s plane to get past Wakanda’s defence systems. Presumably it works, but it has no effect on the magic spell that he actually needs to worry about. In other words, Forge has built a perfect solution to the wrong problem. He spells out later in the issue that he needs to understand what the problem is in order to solve it. (Presumably he could always define “understand the problem” as a second-order problem, but then he’d have to build an entire machine before he could even start solving the main problem, which might take a while.)
X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #3
“Scott Summers vs. The United States of America”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Ryan Stegman
Inkers: JP Mayer & Livesay
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN:
Cyclops tries unsuccessfully to persuade Rogue not to attack Graymalkin; we’ll see Rogue’s side of that conversation in Uncanny X-Men vol 6 #2, which won’t be out for two weeks. Cyclops is clearly aware of the fact that Graymalkin has been turned into a prison over in Uncanny X-Men and thinks that Rogue’s group are hopelessly outpowered by whoever’s in charge of it. Scott evidently had plans of his own to deal with this, and he’s going to have to accelerate them now.
At some point between the end of Krakoa and issue #1, Scott sued the US government over his treatment by Orchis. For some reason, he accepted the Factory as a settlement. So yes, the X-Men are there legally. Scott acknowledges that there was an “implication” that the US government expected the X-Men to stay in Alaska, but seems clear that he never agreed to anything. His ultimate position is that the US government would much rather his group were acting as the X-Men than acting as the Brotherhood, and those are the only two choices he’s offering them. He argues that he’s doing the government a favour by keeping his roster under control, and flags how dodgy they are: most of them are former villains, and Magik’s half demon.
Daredevil Villains #36: Damon Dran, the Indestructible Man
DAREDEVIL #92-94 (October-December 1972)
“On the Eve of the Talon!” / “A Power Corrupt!” / “He Can Crush the World!”
Writer: Gerry Conway
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Tom Palmer
Letterer: John Costanza
Colourist: not credited
Editor: Roy Thomas
I’ve called these issues Daredevil #92-94, but you might have noticed that the cover logo quite clearly says Daredevil and the Black Widow. That starts with issue #92 and continues through to issue #106. During that time, editorial footnotes call the book “DD/BW”.
But according to Marvel, these title of this comic is was still Daredevil during this period. And they have a point. It’s not just a question of checking the copyright warning. The cover design of the time had the title in text just above the cover box, and that still just said Daredevil. The Stan Lee Presents captions on the splash pages still just said Daredevil. And for the most part, despite her equal billing on the cover, the book continued to treat Daredevil as the star and the Black Widow as a supporting character, albeit a prominent one.
The exception is the Project Four storyline, which culminates in these issues. But it’s a major exception. Gerry Conway introduced the subplot back in issue #87, as soon as the book relocated to San Francisco, and it’s been building ever since. In previous issues, we’ve learned that on her very first mission as a Soviet spy, the Black Widow and freelancer Danny French were sent to steal something from the mysterious Project Four. Project Four turned out to be a bunch of scientists working on a mysterious and allegedly powerful artefact. It’s a weird energy globe thing, and it’s the macguffin for the whole arc. Danny French has had it all this time, but he’s never figured out how to use it.
Charts – 23 August 2024
I remember the days when there were more than two new entries a week on the singles chart…
1. Chase & Status and Stormzy – “Backbone”
Two weeks, though the gap is closing. Number 2 is “Good Luck Babe” by Chappell Roan, which has been at that position before, three weeks ago. “Hot to Go” also climbs 12-10 to become her second top 10 hit. And let’s take a moment to acknowledge that “Austin” by Dasha is spending its twentieth week in the top 10; it’s currently at number 6, and it peaked at 5.
7. Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars – “Die With A Smile”
Although Lady Gaga’s name comes first in the credit, this really feels more like a Bruno Mars song to me – it’s a soft rock ballad which is a little too interested in faithfully recreating the past to quite work for me as a song, but only because the strings seem a bit too visible for my liking. If you don’t mind that, then it’s a good single.
