Charts – 29 May 2020
A quiet but relatively normal week…
1. Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande – “Rain On Me”
That’s a… somewhat unpleasant video. Not keen on the knives, personally. Anyway, this is the second single from the next Lady Gaga album, so we’re back to more of a normal promotional cycle. Good song, though – fitting enough for the times. Lady Gaga gets her sixth number one, following 2018’s “Shallow”, and four tracks from her imperial period in 2009-10 (“Just Dance”, “Poker Face”, “Bad Romance” and “Telephone”). Since “Shallow” was very much outside her normal style, this is a definite comeback. It’s Ariana Grande’s sixth number one too, though all of hers have come in 2014 or later.
(more…)Marauders #10 annotations
And we’re back. Now, how did this go again…
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PAGE 1 / COVER. It’s Emma, Storm, Iceman and Forge fighting the guys in the armour that we’ve seen in previous issues. As in X-Force, Forge is using the “organic tech” that he’s been working on since coming to Krakoa.
PAGES 2-5. Sebastian Shaw enjoys Krakoan whiskey. Storm tells Forge that his old power-dampening technology has resurfaced in Russia. Forge admits that one of his underlings from the time had a photographic memory.
Port Genosha. The first time we’ve seen Genosha’s first distillery. For some reason it’s been named after the previous mutant island nation, which was wiped out by Sentinels in New X-Men vol 1 #115. From the scale of this thing, it looks as if Sebastian Shaw is trying to develop a business that isn’t based on pharmaceuticals… which is probably quite sensible for the Krakoan economy, to be honest . But obviously the trope here is the rich villain who’s killed someone and is mostly interested in his luxury goods.
(more…)Charts – 22 May 2020
New comics are apparently imminent once again. In the meantime, we have… well, an extremely uneventful chart, but a format’s a format.
1. DaBaby featuring Roddy Ricch – “Rockstar”
Two weeks at number one, and with a comfortable lead. Below that… it’s a long list of climbers before we reach the highest new entry. Deep breath, then. “Say So” by Doja Cat returns to number 2 (after dropping to 3 last week). “Rover” by S1mba featuring DTG climbs 8-4. “Flowers” by Nathan Dawe featuring Jaykae climbs 17-13. A more notable one, moving 24-15, is “Breaking Me” by Topic featuring A7S. “This City” by Sam Fischer edges up one place to 19. “Don’t Need Love” by 220 Kid & Gracey is still climbing (22-20), which is a good performance for a throwback dance record. Doja Cat‘s other single “Boss Bitch” rebounds to 24, beating its previous peak of 28 from a month ago. “Kings & Queens” by Ava Max climbs 29-25. And finally we reach…
30. Regard & Raye – “Secrets”
(more…)Charts – 15 May 2020
Charts – 8 May 2020
We’re back to relative normalcy after a couple of weeks of charity releases. If you’re wondering, the “Times Like These” cover drops straight from 1 to 9. The Michael Ball / Tom Moore track, which was number 1 two weeks ago, dropped to 21 last week, and is now out of the top 100 altogether – as I said at the time, it’s a “join in the moment” record, not a “listen to this for pleasure” record. Instead, this week we have the refreshing normalcy of…
1 Drake – “Toosie Slide”
10. Drake featuring Giveon – “Chicago Freestyle”
17. Drake featuring Playboi Carti – “Pain 1993”
House to Astonish Episode 183
There’s not a huge amount of comics news, and no new comics to review, so we’re leaning in to the last segment of our show and bringing you the biggest Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe to date. Sit back and enjoy the first episode we’ve ever recorded remotely, as we look to rehabilitate all 27 characters introduced in Marvel’s 1993 annuals. Annex! Genis-Vell! Adam-X! Live unbagging of 18 comics! Fun, of a sort!
The episode 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. And remember, you can get our swanky-dan t-shirts over at our Redbubble store.
Charts – 1 May 2020
It’s going to be like this for a while, isn’t it?
1. Live Lounge Allstars – “Times Like These (BBC Radio 1 Stay Home Live Lounge)”
Climbing to number 1 in its first full week on release., so that’s two charity number ones in a row. The Michael Ball / Tom Moore record, by the way, plummets from 1 to 21 – but that’s hardly surprising, because it’s a record designed to be a symbolic moment rather than… well, something you listen to for enjoyment. “Times Like These” is a perfectly listenable record, and so it’s likely to have a bit more staying power.
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men
Completing our look at the Krakoa-era X-books that have actually finished stories so far, we have the first two Giant-Size X-Men one-shots.
Giant-Size is an odd format. The name refers back to the issue that launched the new X-Men back in 1975, and which was meant to be the first of a quarterly series that never happened. (Issue #2 was a reprint, and then they just cancelled the thing.) Here, though, it’s a series of one-shot Hickman stories. Except… well, X-Men is already mostly a series of one-shot Hickman stories.
Read moreCharts – 24 April 2020
Fallen Angels #1-6
Well, they can’t all be winners.
If there’s one thing about the first wave of Krakoa X-books that everyone seems to have agreed on, it’s that Fallen Angels wasn’t very good. And there’s a part of me that regrets having to say that, because it certainly wasn’t phoned in. You can see, in theory, what it was going for. You can see how it looked like a reasonable idea at the pitch stage. But the end result is a mess, for a whole range of reasons.
One factor here is that Fallen Angels seems to have been cut short. It’s principally a Kwannon book, but the first arc is plainly structured as a “gathering of the team”. Even on that level it’s strangely put together, with half the cast only appearing towards the end, and contributing very little. But it ends up with Kwannon running a team of vaguely outsidery mutants as part of a side deal with Mr Sinister. And then it stops.
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