Sabretooth & The Exiles #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
SABRETOOTH & THE EXILES #3
“Station Three”
Writer: Victor LaValle
Artist: Leonard Kirk
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Nekra and Sabretooth fight. I assume that red and white swirly background is meant to say “astral plane”, though it’s really more “Jim Steranko”.
PAGE 2. Recap and credits.
PAGE 3. Establishing shot of the astral plane.
Third Eye, as our narrator, describes this version of the astral plane as “the classics”. It’s basically the Ditko Dr Strange version of the astral plane, complete with something in the bottom right that resembles the window from Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum.
PAGE 4. Sabretooth and the Exiles in the astral plane.
In keeping with the general swirliness of the astral plane, the art gives us a breakdown in the passage of time, with a page that’s simultaneously a series of panels and a single static splash page. Everyone appears much as they do on Earth, complete with Nanny and Orphan-Maker in their armour.
Sins of Sinister #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
SINS OF SINISTER #1
“Everything is Sinister”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Guest artists: Geoffrey Shaw, Marco Checchetto, Juan José Ryp, David Baldéon, Travel Foreman, Carlos Gómez, Federico Vincentini, David Lopez, Joshua Cassara & Stefano Caselli
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan White
COVER / PAGE 1. Sinister in a central diamond, surrounded by shards with images of other X-Men and Quiet Council members.
This is a one-shot, effectively an extra issue of Immortal X-Men, which leads into the “Sins of Sinister” arc that runs over the next three issues of Immortal X-Men, Legion of X and X-Men Red – retitled for the interim as Immoral X-Men, Nightcrawlers and Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants.
PAGE 2. Carlos Pacheco obituary.
Charts – 20 January 2023
Well, I never got around to doing last week’s column, so let’s jump direct to yesterday’s chart and pick up the other new entries as we go along. In fact, we’ve missed an entire number one, because “Pointless” by Lewis Capaldi was at the top last week. And this is… probably something the chart would prefer not to think about.
Basically, Capaldi hyped himself to number one for a single week the old fashioned way – in the worst possible sense of that concept – by encouraging his fanbase to order heavily discounted copies of the CD single, of all things. There’s some silly story about too many having been ordered, or something like that, which I assume we’re not meant to actually believe. At any rate, the upshot is that Capaldi got himself a week at number one on the back of physical sales to hardcore fans, with a chart record that reads 20-43-40-60-15-1-12. This is silly.
Immortal X-Men #10 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #10
“Hated and Feared”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: David Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Professor X, with his helmet damaged to expose part of his face.
PAGE 2. Carlos Pacheco obituary.
PAGE 3. Mr Sinister creates a new save point.
We saw Sinister doing something similar to this with Moira VI in the previous issue – and then burning through all ten of her iterations before finally managing to be semi-successful in his assassination attempt on the Quiet Council. Once again, he uses Velocidad’s time warping powers to get this seventh Moira clone to a stage where she can be used as a save point. As seen in issue #1, Sinister’s scheme involves killing the Moira clones and using their powers to carry information back in time so that when their lives start over, he has access to the information from the deleted timeline. Hence, the absence of any information in the clone’s memory means this is its first timeline.
Legion of X #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
LEGION OF X #9
“A Voice in the Wilderness”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons & Álvaro López
Colourist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. A corrupted Nightcrawler, leading the techno-organic infection in the Narthex, with Legion and Professor X’s faces hovering behind.
PAGE 2. Data page – a string of alert events, presumably the one that Fabian is reading on the next page. The first one relates to the events of the previous issue. The others seem to be just generic examples of other mutants becoming corrupted by the same thing that’s afflicting Nightcrawler. Item five relates to the Akademos Habitat on Krakoa (the teens’ area), but I don’t think it relates to anything specific from this arc.
PAGE 3-4. Other mutants are corrupted; the Legion react.
Wolverine #29 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #29
“The Beast Agenda: The Mind Garden”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colourist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine surrounded by angry-looking people from his past – Omega Red, Mystique, Storm, Phoenix, Sabretooth, Jubilee and Silver Fox. Well, arguably Phoenix isn’t that angry. They’re linked to his mind by Krakoan tendrils.
PAGE 2. Wolverine hallucinates about his first encounter with the Hudsons.
Obviously, these opening pages are Wolverine hallucinating about key moments in his life, under the influence of the Pit. When we left off, the Beast had tried to more or less lobotomise Wolverine, but he’d escaped, and Krakoa had pulled him down into the Pit. Since his time in the Pit seems to contribute to his personality resetting, that might explain why he starts off at one of the most savage points in his life. (The period immediately after Origin would have worked too, but it isn’t so iconic in his history.)
Housekeeping
Just for anyone wondering, the rest of this week’s posts are probably going to wind up slipping a week or so. I’ll catch up in due course.
X-Men #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #18
“Wounded Wolves”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: CF Villa
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Designer: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Synch fights vampires while using Wolverine (Laura)’s powers. And yes, they are vampires, not just random nobodies. Some of them have fangs.
PAGE 2. Opening page – a quote from both Jean and Scott. I’m sure this has probably appeared in dialogue somewhere during the series, but I don’t have time to trawl through the back issues, I’m afraid.
PAGE 3. Beast recaps the plot.
Laura seemingly died covering Synch’s escape from the Vault, and was resurrected on Krakoa, in X-Men vol 5 #19. The original, older Laura was rescued from the Vault last issue and happily reunited with Synch, her partner from her time inside the Vault, who has been pining for her ever since he escaped. (The resurrected version had no memories of their time together).
Charts – 6 January 2023
The first chart of the post-Christmas period is always insane, as the Christmas records crash straight out of the top 100, and the records that would have been in the top 40 flood back in to take their place. I’m not going to bother documenting all the records leaving the top 40 this week – it’s everything aside from number 13, 31, 32, 37 and 38. One point that is worth mentioning, though, is that with the departure of his Christmas record from 2022, Ed Sheeran no longer has any singles in the top 40. The last Sheeranless top 40 was in June 2021, just before the release of “Bad Habits”.
So – who’s still standing in the rubble?
1. Raye featuring 070 Shake – “Escapism”
Yay! This entered the chart at the start of December, and it’s hung in there throughout the Christmas storm – it’s had four weeks in the top 10 so far, and it was still at 13 last week. It’s fantastic and plainly deserves to be a number one. If it wasn’t for the Christmas back catalogue, it would have been already.
Marauders #10 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS vol 2 #10
“Here Comes Yesterday, part 4”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer & production: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller
COVER / PAGE 1: A Psylocke pin-up.
PAGES 2-4. Kate and Amass fight Stryfe.
When we left off, Amass had been captured by the Unbreathing. Kate disappeared earlier in the issue but (as pointed out in the comments last time) the implication was that Amass had used their powers to absorb her. That was also hinted at on page 22 of the previous issue, when Amass told himself to “stop talking to yourself – someone might think it’s strange”.
That implication is confirmed here, and also explains why “Amass” recognised Stryfe when he unmasked at the end of the previous issue – presumably that was Kate talking.
