X-Force #49 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, andpage numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #49
“We Need to Talk About Beast”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramanga
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Beast and Wonder Man burst forth, with X-Force in the background. It’s a homage to the cover of Giant-Size X-Men #1.
PAGES 2-4. The Beast raids the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.
This is the Krakoa-era Beast. He’s wearing the suit of Krakoan armour that he stole from the Greenhouse last issue. According to page 10, the component he steals here is a “nuclear reactor”; we see him on page 11 welding it into his “black hole gun”. The US military has experimented with portable nuclear reactors, but not that portable. Still, this is the Marvel Universe.
Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station is a real place. According to its website, it’s “America’s premier weapons station family [sic], and winner of the 2021 Commander, Navy Region Southwest Installation Excellence Award for Small Installations.” Basically, it provides weapons storage and support to the US Pacific fleet.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
Daredevil Villains #16: The Boss
DAREDEVIL #29 (June 1967)
“Unmasked!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: John Tartaglione
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: not credited
As Daredevil approached issue #30, Stan Lee was getting downright sluggish when it came to new ideas for villains. Last month was little green men. This month is “the heartless hood they call… the Boss!” The Boss is just a regular old crime boss, with no particular hook. Often characters like this represent Daredevil toying with the sort of stories that will eventually make the book work. Less so in this case.
The issue opens with Matt pondering a dilemma. He’s decided to ask Karen to marry him. No, you didn’t miss an issue. It’s all or nothing with Matt. The dilemma is: should he marry her as Matt, or as Mike? Yes, this sounds like an excellent foundation for a healthy marriage. As Colan draws him, Matt at home looks like a genial English professor, with a nice cardigan and a tweed jacket. For some reason he also has a signed photograph of Karen Page. Seems like an odd gift for Karen to give to a man she believes to be completely blind, but it keeps showing up in later issues.
Meanwhile, we check in on the Masked Marauder’s men. The Marauder died two issues ago, and his men have been waiting patiently for “over a month” for further orders. Finally, they decide that he’s really not coming back, and so they open his last instruction. It tells them to go after Nelson and Murdock, find out who Daredevil is, and then avenge the Marauder’s defeat. The Marauder certainly has a lot of faith in his men to carry out this vague instruction from a man who is, presumably, no longer paying their wages. But follow it they do, heading to the Nelson & Murdock offices in the Marauder’s customised truck that very night.
Charts – 16 February 2024
I had completely forgotten that Noah Kahan was even in the album top ten but…
1. Noah Kahan – “Stick Season”
31. Noah Kahan – “Forever”
That’s seven weeks. You’d think it’d be tailing off by now – it’s been on the top 40 for a total of 19 weeks by now. But Noah Kahan is touring the UK right now, and he’s also released the deluxe edition of his third album, also titled “Stick Season”. That album was released in October 2022, and first showed up in the album chart in June 2023 when his got his first minor hit single (“Dial Drunk”). It re-entered the album top 40 back in October and it’s been climbing ever since. It’s been in the top five all year and it now climbs to number 1. Very, very few albums climb to number 1, let alone on this sort of timescale.
As for “Forever”, that’s the token original track from the new edition of the album – the rest of the new tracks are the duet versions of existing album tracks that he’s previously released as singles. “Forever” is not officially a single, which is unsurprising given that it has a very slow two and a half minute introduction. Kahan also has a third track in the top 40, “Homesick”, at number 11.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor is still stuck at number 2, where “Murder on the Dancefloor” has spent five of the last six weeks.
9. Beyoncé – “Texas Hold ‘Em”
Beyoncé goes country. There was a time when I’d have said this might be a tough sell for the international audience, but country’s having a relatively good year in the singles chart. That said, it’s the more folky side of country that’s been doing okay in the UK, so I’ll be interested to see how this plays. It’s certainly a bold move.
The X-Axis – w/c 12 February 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #126. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy & Yen Nitro. Captain Britain, Rictor and Shatterstar go to break mutants out of British government custody, but the Externals have got there first. This is at least a bit more focussed than previous issues – we’re not jumping all over the place any more, and at least we’re back to the supposed plot – but it’s still hard to figure out what the hook is meant to be. Most of the Externals were bush league characters at the best of time, and nothing here is really setting out a stall for why we should be interested to see them again – and thus far, whatever Selene has planned isn’t really that different from any other “Fall of X” story about Orchis persecution. The individual issue is better, but I still don’t get what this story is trying to do.
WOLVERINE #43. (Annotations here.) The first two issues of “Sabretooth War” were fairly dire, but this is rather more like it. The gratuitous violence is kept down to one big moment, and it’s much more effective that way, while Wolverine himself is barely in this issue. Instead, we get Sabretooth thinking back to the happy days when he and Logan were killing lots of people side by side, the remaining alt-Sabretooths wondering why the hell they’ve been following this clown, and the Exiles showing up to enter the plot. Geoff Shaw’s art also brings this much closer to feeling like a continuation of Sabretooth & The Exiles. Victor LaValle’s contribution wasn’t terribly evident in the last couple of issues but it’s rather more recognisable here. That’s a relief, because I had no interest in a 12-issue arc that read like the first couple of issue. This is far more promising.
Wolverine #43 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #43
“Sabretooth War, part 3”
Writers: Victor LaValle & Benjamin Percy
Artist: Geoff Shaw
Colour artist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Sabretooth and Wolverine in their Team X days.
PAGES 2-3. Flashback: Team X on a mission in Nicaragua.
Specifically, Sabretooth, Wolverine and Maverick (the other Team X member who shows up regularly in this book). So far as we can tell at this stage, this is just Sabretooth nostalgically recalling a random mission – with somewhat meta comments about nostalgia, this being a strand of continuity that dates back to the 1990s. The main point is really that Sabretooth looks back on these days fondly, which ties to the idea later that he wants to bring Wolverine back to this sort of persona too. In the next scene, Sabretooth seems to suggest that his team of alt-Creeds is also an attempt to recapture his sense of belonging from these days.
Fall of the House of X #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF X #2
“Long Games End”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Polaris in front of Knowhere.
PAGES 2-6. Polaris and the Brood storm the Bloom.
“Feilong has abandoned ship just to go kill one man – Tony Stark, who built some fancy new suit for himself right under his nose…” This is footnoted to Invincible Iron Man #15, which won’t be out for another two weeks. As of issue #14, Feilong was increasingly preoccupied with defeating Iron Man, and the AI contingent of Orchis were losing patience with him.
“Make it so, M.O.D.O.K.!” Dr Stasis is referencing Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the bridge layout is indeed rather similar.
Polaris and Knowhere. Issue #1 ended with Polaris travelling to Knowhere and enlisting Broo’s contingent of the Brood – who have been living there since X-Men #21 – to help. Apparently she wanted the whole head. Knowhere is the severed head of a dead Celestial, as M.O.D.O.K. alludes to.
Daredevil Villains #15: The Queega
Again, we’re skipping a couple of issues with returning villains – issues #26-27 feature the return of Stilt-Man and the final defeat of the Masked Marauder.
DAREDEVIL #28 (May 1967)
“Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Planet!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Dick Ayers
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: not credited
Yes, it’s a flying saucer issue. The aliens are really just little green men – well, they’re quite big green reptiles, I suppose, but you get the point. They aren’t even named in this issue. The name “Queega” comes from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.
Matt accepts an invitation to give a talk at Carter College on the legal aspects of flying saucers. About a third of the book is taken up with the romantic triangle before we even get to the College, where Matt plans to wing his way through a talk on a subject he knows nothing about. As it turns out, he just gives a fairly sensible talk about how the law would treat aliens if they ever showed up. In fact, you could make a case for this being one of the more legally sound issues of Daredevil. (Readers interested in the sum total of UK case law on this topic are directed to paragraph 23(2) of this decision.)
The talk is interrupted by the sound of a gunshot. Exciting!
It turns out that the shot was fired by Professor Tom Brewster, a UFO obsessive who claims to have stumbled upon some aliens in the woods. Rather surprisingly, Brewster is promptly arrested for firing a gun in a public place.
Naturally, Daredevil suspects that Brewster is telling the truth. So he investigates, and stumbles upon a flying saucer. The aliens seem surprised that “another human has discovered our presence on this primitive planet”, despite having set up base two minutes’ walk from a university campus. The aliens are reptilian semi-humanoids with weird energy halos. Wouldn’t you just know it, their main weapon turns out to be a ray that blinds people. Of course, it has no effect on Daredevil whatsoever. Unfortunately, they also have a secondary weapon: a delayed-effect freeze ray, which does work on him.
Charts – 9 February 2024
Sometimes I hope for a nice quiet week. Sometimes the charts really, really deliver.
1. Noah Kahan – “Stick Season”
Six weeks. It heads up a gloriously uneventful top four of non-movers.
40. Good Neighbours – “Home”
There you go. That’s this week’s new entries. They’re a London duo and this is their debut single. Entirely pleasant! It’s also climbing from last week’s number 81, so there’s every reason to think that it’s likely to go further.
The X-Axis – w/c 5 February 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #125. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Nick Roche & Yen Nitro. Gosh, this is a quiet month, isn’t it? Another week with just two X-books and an Infinity Comic. It picks up in the last week of the month, but honestly, I’d be perfectly happy to see the line dialled back to something like this.
Anyway… the middle chapters of X-Men Unlimited arcs are often tricky to review, since the individual issues are fairly short. This issue is very much more of the same – whatever the notional plot about Selene kidnapping mutants might be, the actual point of this arc seems to boil down to checking in on a bunch of characters who didn’t merit a miniseries, so we can see what they’re up to. This issue, Captain Britain. There are a couple of obvious problems here. For one thing, the arc is completely unfocussed and scattershot, so there’s no real momentum towards anything. For another, every character is doing much the same thing: fighting random Orchis guys, or at least Orchis-adjacent thugs. And after several months of “Fall of X”, we’ve kind of beaten that one into the ground. There just aren’t enough variations on the theme to sustain it.
X-Men #31 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #31
“The Passenger”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Phil Noto
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight Nimrod.
PAGE 2. Synch and Talon talk.
Talon was killed last issue while fighting the High Evolutionary, and Synch is acting as a host for her mind. As the issue goes on to spell out, Synch can only do this by using her powers to copy the absent Jean Grey – and, apparently, he has to keep doing it. As we’ve established in earlier issues, Synch ages when he uses his powers to copy absent mutants. We’re told later on that he was getting round this problem by copying Talon’s healing factor, but now that she’s dead, he can’t do that any more – so the effort of keeping her alive in his mind is going to kill him unless she can be decanted to somewhere else rather quickly. All of this was actually set up quite well in earlier issues of the series, making it all the stranger that Talon’s death was covered in such a rushed way.
“We’re about to launch an invasion of Earth…” In Fall of the House of X.
PAGE 3. Nightcrawler and Shadowkat tend to Synch.
When we left him last issue, Synch was in reasonably good shape, aside from having Talon in his head. Presumably it’s the stress of continually mimicking Jean’s powers that are the main issue here. Shadowkat seems to suggest that he copied Talon’s powers in his sleep, and got infected when he popped her claws, though if that’s the idea the art doesn’t really sell it – not only is there no blood, but his gloves are completely undamaged.
