Charts – January 2016
Well, what an interesting month. I think this year we’ll loosen up the format and go a bit more freeform, yes? Alright.
So. We left off with the Christmas chart, and with the Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir at number 1 with “A Bridge Over You”. Normal service was swiftly resumed as “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber, which had already been number one for three weeks, returned to the top for a further three. Admittedly, that’s during the normal early-January dead season for new releases. But since Bieber also had the immediately preceding number one (“Sorry”), the NHS Choir wind up as the sole week of respite in nine weeks of Justin Bieber.
All-New X-Men #1-3 – “Ghost of the Cyclops”
The most striking thing about the opening arc of Dennis Hopeless and Mark Bagley’s All-New X-Men might be how low key it is. A three parter, instead of the traditional six – this will be the first half of the first trade paperback collection. No big name villains. No big villains at all, in fact – the bad guys here are pretty much at the bottom of the pecking order. The stakes, at least in that sense, are determinedly low.
Which is actually quite a pleasant change. It’s not that there isn’t melodrama and hand-wringing in here – of course there is, Cyclops is in the book. But this series turns out to be an open-ended teen road trip, entirely unbothered about the whole Terrigen Mists thing.
Chikara 15.11: “Aniversario: A New Attitude”
Chikara’s birthday was on 25 May 2002, which it celebrates every year with Aniversario – sometimes a show, sometimes a weekend tour, it varies. It’s one of the fixtures in their calendar, but some way behind King of Trios, or for that matter the season finale; it’s more of a well established marker post in the year. Frankly, the Challenge of the Immortals tournament format that dominated 2015 doesn’t lend itself to a major show at this point, since virtually every story is building to something much further down the line. The result is a relatively normal looking card, but with a bigger than normal crowd.
When and where: It’s 24 May 2015 (the day after the previous show), and we’re in the Palmer Center in Easton, Pennsylvania. This is essentially Chikara’s home venue, if you leave aside their actual training facility. It’s a community centre gym, but a pretty substantial one. We’ll be back here for King of Trios later in the year. It’s a sell out. There’s a prominent advert at the back of the hall for Electric Monkey energy drink, which is a real thing, and is product placement. Remember that, it’ll be coming up in a bit.
1. Elimination match: N_R_G (Race Jaxon & Hype Rockwell) v. The Battle Hive (Amasis & Worker Ant) v. The Nightmare Warriors (Frightmare & Silver Ant) v. Kevin Condron & ???.
House to Astonish Episode 141
We’re back to normal operations this time round (by which I mean “recorded with sound errors” – for some reason the laptop didn’t pick up the mic so the show recorded using the internal mic on the Macbook, which means a slightly echoey experience that long-time listeners will remember from our first year). We’ve got a good bit of chat about Civil War II, the newly-announced Poe Dameron ongoing, the all-new Wasp, Netflix’s potential Punisher series, titbits of info on the Wonder Woman movie and the creative team change on A-Force. We’re also casting a critical eye over the December sales charts, reviewing Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion and Spider-Man/Deadpool and the _fficial Ha_db_ _k _f the _fficial Ha_db_ _k _f the Marvel U_iverse. All this plus Barney Stinson: Hitler’s Wingman, a ham & egg breakfast and the Green Lantern Corps Rotary Club AGM.
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. And remember, there are super-awesome House to Astonish t-shirts on sale at our Redbubble store, and they really suit you.
Extraordinary X-Men vol 1: X-Haven
So here we go again.
This time around, Extraordinary X-Men is the flagship of the X-books, which is to say that it’s the one that actually has the X-Men in it, as opposed than the time travelling teens or a rebranded X-Force. And so it’s the book that has the task of dealing head on with the new status quo, in which the Terrigen Mists are empowering Inhumans while wiping out the mutants. I wrote last week about why that’s a pretty bad idea, and I may come back in another post to look in more detail at how it messes up the formula that the X-Men’s popularity was built on. No point repeating all that again here; you can take it as read for now.
What’s really striking about this book, though, is how traditional it is in pretty much every other respect.
The X-Axis: State of the Nation
It’s been a while.
This, of course, is a happy side effect of Marvel deciding to have two line-wide break points in 2015 – at the start and end of Secret Wars – giving nice long breaks where everything’s in mid-storyline and I can put my feet up and recharge. Because the current relaunch has rolled out so slowly, we should get back to a more regular schedule from here on – Uncanny X-Men launched this week, just as Extraordinary X-Men is about to finish its first arc. Soon we’ll be back to five regular X-books – Uncanny, All-New, Extraordinary, Wolverine and Old Man Logan.
That’s still taking us back to the levels of 1989. For better or worse, after a long period of treading water, it does feel like the X-Men are entering a new phase of their history – one that’s going to be based around adjusting to reduced circumstances in more ways than one.
Watch With Father #8: Gigglebiz & Justin’s House
Comedy for the very young. It’s not as easy as it sounds. They’re unforgiving. They don’t laugh politely. There is no hiding place. If you’re not getting it right, you will know .
Last time, we looked at Something Special, a robustly cheering exercise in good-naturedness, inclusiveness and communication. But that’s just part of the empire of Justin Fletcher. Aside from his voice acting work, he has two other shows in permanent rotation on CBeebies which are pure comedy: the sketch show Gigglebiz and the sitcom Justin’s House.
Chikara 15.10: “Back to Skull”
This is the first of a series of mini-shows held in the Wrestle Factory, Chikara’s training school in Philadelphia. They more or less replaced the local shows that Chikara used to run under the banner “Wrestling Is Fun”. WIF was, at least in part, a device to let Chikara run shows during the period when the company itself was supposedly shut down (since it was supposedly a separate company), and with that storyline completed, it’s served its purpose. In 2015, with so many tournament matches to get through, pretty much everything had to be classified as an official show. This one was chucked in as a bonus if you bought “Aniversario”, the major show that took place the next night. It does have some material that’s important to storylines, though, which is why I’m not skipping past it.
When and where: It’s 23 May 2015. As mentioned, we’re in the Wrestle Factory – more accurately, the new Wrestle Factory, because they’ve just relocated. It’s small, but there’s lighting, there’s a proper entrance set, and the walls are lined with banners for the ten Challenge of the Immortals teams.
1. Amasis v. Missile Assault Ant (more…)
House to Astonish Episode 140
It’s the last day of 2015, so an end-of year wrap-up seems appropriate. It’s the Homies awards, as is normal for us at this time of year, and we’re awarding all sorts of gongs and other glittering prizes to the comics, creators and stories that most impressed us this year, including totting up the results of our listener vote. Hark! as we lay a potentially surprising amount of praise at DC’s door. Herald! as we try to work out what exactly is Gwenpool. Sing! as we let our central conceit slide with remarkable frequency. There’s no news, reviews or Official Handbook this time round, but we’ve got mince pies and hot chocolate, so you never know who might come carolling. All this plus a human Jaffa Cake, Halley’s clockwork comet, Jeff Lemire’s Blue Tooth and Monty Python’s Secret Wars.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. Remember, Christmas may be over, but that just means summer’s on its way, so you should stock up on fab t-shirts like the ones available at our Redbubble store.
Thanks to everyone for sticking with us this year. Onwards to 2016!
(If you want to check out our previous awards shows, they’re here and here, and they’re various degrees of fun.)
Charts – December 2015
Ah, Christmas. That wonderful time of the year when the chart abandons even the faintest pretence of making sense.
Let’s try starting with the month’s number ones, and then have a look at the rest.
4, 11 and 18 December 2015 – Justin Bieber, “Love Yourself”
