Charts – 10 November 2023
Really?
I mean, really?
1. The Beatles – “Now and Then”
Okay, so. This was at number 42 last week because it was released in time to get 10 hours of streaming registered for last week’s chart. That would have been an artificially low placing, because only a few streamers report data that late, and the figures for the others would have been estimated from their data earlier in the week (which, in the case of a last minute release, is zero).
However, it’s not number one thanks to streaming. Its chart score is equivalent to 78,200 sales, which includes 38,000 physical copies, and a further 10,000 odd downloads. No record has sold that volume of physical copies since the 2014 X Factor winner, because that’s just not how regular audiences consume music any more. Obviously, something that can be marketed as a last Beatles single appeals heavily to an audience who rarely pay attention to new releases and haven’t updated their format preferences in 20 years or more.
Daredevil Villains #7: Stilt-Man
Daredevil #7 doesn’t have a villain – it’s a fight with Namor the Sub-Mariner, who was just about to launch his own feature in Tales to Astonish. So we move on to…
DAREDEVIL #8 (June 1965)
“The Stiltman Cometh”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Artist: Wally Wood
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: Not credited
In the first instalment of this series, I asked whether people could name ten Daredevil villains. Well, here’s one that plenty of people remembered: Stilt-Man. (In fact, in this issue he’s Stilt Man or Stiltman. He won’t get the hyphen until later. But I’ll go with the more familiar version of the name here.)
Everyone remembers Stilt-Man, even if they don’t remember a single one of his stories. Once seen, he’s not easy to forget. He is iconically lame. Silver Age Marvel was fairly light on completely ridiculous villains, and when Marvel did stray into this territory, they often leaned into it. But in his debut, Stilt-Man is played mostly straight. He’s certainly presented as a real threat.
So thing that really makes him stick in the mind is the “what were they thinking” factor. Sure, it’s a struggle to keep thinking of new gimmicks for villains. But… stilts? Even if you’re picking words at random from the dictionary… stilts? Massive, clearly impractical, skyscraper-sized stilts? There’s something adorably mundane about the whole concept of a stilt-themed supervillain, no matter how extraordinary those stilts may be. Did someone have a traumatic childhood experience with a stilt? Even the pros look tentative and awkward moving on stilts. Their height doesn’t translate into an intimidation factor. Nobody has ever looked at a stilt-walker and thought, I bet they’d be dangerous in a fight.
The X-Axis – w/c 6 November 2023
It’s another more or less reasonable week for new releases. Brace yourself for next week, though, which has Alpha Flight, Astonishing Iceman, Children of the Vault, Dark X-Men, Jean Grey, Uncanny Avengers and X-Men Unlimited. This time, though, we have just one Unlimited book and three Fall of X titles.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #112. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. This is the first part of a Firestar arc tying in to “Fall of X”. Like the Sunfire arc, it’s written by Orlando and Foxe, who are both working on regular “Fall of X” titles, and so it seems as if Unlimited is going to be tying in a little more closely than it generally has in the past. In this case, it’s being used to do some material about the internal politics of Orchis and, I suspect, to tie up a Steve Orlando plotline that never quite made it into the normal titles but has seen a bit of play in the Infinity books.
We kick off with a bit of set-up for Firestar’s current status quo, even though it could probably have been skipped in an Infinity Comic (after all, if you’ve got access to this story, by definition you’ve got access to Hellfire Gala 2023). Still, it’s also used to set up Orchis’ attitude to her. Killian Devo isn’t at all convinced by the idea of parading Firestar around as a friendly mutant – doesn’t it undermine the message? Dr Stasis seems to regard her as a bit of a burden as well, but seems driven to honour the deal that he believes he made with her. But Firestar isn’t the only mutant in Orchis, and the higher ups are also starting to wonder why on Earth they let Judas Traveller in. So the supposedly loyal Firestar is seconded to Judas Traveller to try and figure out why he’s there and what he’s up to.
Uncanny Spider-Man #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #3
“Superpositional”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Javier Pina
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Nightcrawler fights Silver Sable.
PAGES 2-4. Nightcrawler fights Gaap and the Wild Pack.
The narrators here are the Vulture and Nimrod.
Gaap the Integument is said to be a Deviant; he’s a new character. Gaap is a traditional demon name; an “integument” is just a tough outer protective layer. Gaap is wearing the same mind control device that was used on Rhino last issue and on Nightcrawler in X-Men: Before the Fall – Sons of X #1. Obviously, this is a repeat of the same basic idea that was tried that issue with the Rhino: lure out Nightcrawler so the Wild Pack can try to catch him.
Nightcrawler has apparently embraced the nickname “Creepy Crawler”, after initially calling himself Spinnenmann.
X-Men Red #17 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #17
“The Avatar of Life”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Yildiray Çinar
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Apocalypse holds… well, some sort of energy ball with the logo.
PAGES 2-4. Apocalypse and Vulcan.
Last issue ended with Apocalypse, the hooded guy and his sidekick demon – named later in the issue as “Orc” – arriving in the Autumn Lands and declaring that he would “remake the world” there. He specifically mentioned a “sun caged below”, referring to Vulcan, who was imprisoned there in issue #10. Evidently Apocalypse has just freed Vulcan between issues.
Vulcan assumes that Apocalypse is (as usual) recruiting a new Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and asks whether he’s going to be Death – though with an obvious double meaning, threatening Apocalypse. Apocalypse acknowledges that he’s formed plenty of Horsemen groups in the past, all named after the four children who he lost when Arakko was severed from Earth, and he claims to have had a hand in adding their names to “the sacred texts of humankind” – i.e., the Book of Revelation.
X-Force #46 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #46
“A Tale of Two Brothers”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: GURU-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Designers: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Mikhail and Colossus fight. Not wild about that movie advert banner we seem to be getting on every cover this month, but hey, needs must.
PAGES 2-4. Mikhail appeals to Colossus.
This is where we left off last issue. The black void is one of the dimensional rifts that Mikhail created using his powers; Chronicler sent Colossus here last issue in order to provide him with some sort of resolution after being ordered to move on to writing about a new subject in Orchis.
Mikhail makes a last ditch appeal to Colossus as a brother, which is almost certainly insincere. Bear in mind that in issue #44, Mikhail was completely indifferent to Chronicler’s warnings that Colossus could die if he simply dropped control. Mikhail also seems to misread Colossus’ likely reaction to being told that the Beast had the right idea.
That said… the Beast would doubtless say that “Fall of X” does vindicate him. This is precisely the sort of existential threat to Krakoa that he was working to stop all this time, and as soon as he was taken off the board, look what happened. Except of course that there’s no evidence at all that Beast saw any of Orchis’ angles coming – in particular, he evidently failed to spot the doctoring of Krakoan drugs. But the way things have worked out, the Beast has the opportunity to make the claim and to disavow any responsibility.
Daredevil Villains #6: Mister Fear
DAREDEVIL #6 (February 1965)
“Trapped By … the Fellowship of Fear”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Artist: Wally Wood
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: uncredited
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the thinking behind this one. Daredevil is the Man Without Fear. It says so on the cover. So clearly his natural enemy is someone who inspires fear. Hence, Mister Fear. Job done. Pub?
Even without Daredevil’s gimmick to play off, fear is a fine motif for a villain. After all, over at DC, it’s the Scarecrow’s whole thing. But that’s hindsight. At this point, the Scarecrow is a villain who appeared in two stories during World War II and was never seen again. He won’t be revived for another couple of years. The fear motif is open for use. So once again, Daredevil gets in first with a version of an idea that another character will get right in a few years time.
But Mr Fear doesn’t stick around. The identity doesn’t get revived for years, and even then, it’s someone else under the mask. So what went wrong?
We might start by asking whether Daredevil’s “Man Without Fear” tagline is anything more than a tagline. Is the idea really central to the character? Is Daredevil noticeably more fearless than any other superhero? Well, not really. His central gimmick is his blindness and the way he works around that with his other senses. There are moments in the early issues which really play down how much he’s getting from his radar sense and suggest that he’s taking incredible risks on the information available to him, to be sure. There’s one in this issue, where he jumps from a rooftop to attack some bad guys and, if you take the dialogue literally, he’s just hoping that there’s going to be a lamppost to grab hold of.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 17
The Thunderbolts are on a collision course with Scourge (and issue 50), but right now they’ve got to deal with Moonstone’s identity crisis, the Battle of Techno’s Ear and the arrival of Genis-Vell, as we look at issues 45-47 from the turn of the millennium. Plus Cybergoth Santa, the Titanian Smurfs and the concept of Pink Pavements crossovers.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on BlueSky or Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page, and there’s always our Redbubble store if you feel underdressed and are happy to wait a couple of weeks for that to be remedied.
Charts – 3 November 2023
For two weeks, Kenya Grace’s “Strangers” has held off cässo’s “Prada” by a tiny margin. This week, “Strangers” drops to number 4. Is it finally cässo’s time? No, of course it isn’t.
1. Taylor Swift – “Is It Over Now (Taylor’s Version)”
2. Taylor Swift – “Now That We Don’t Talk (Taylor’s Version)”
5. Taylor Swift – “‘Slut!’ (Taylor’s Version)”
The maximum three songs from “1989 (Taylor’s Version)”, which enters the album chart as her 11th number 1. These three are all previously unreleased “vault” songs, which understandably get the most attention from her fanbase.
I’d say these songs have placed in reverse order of interest? “Is It Over Now” is very much what you’d expect from a song that didn’t make the cut for a Taylor Swift album, and what sort of lyric is “Oh Lord, I think about jumping / Off of very tall somethings”? “Now That We Don’t Talk” is a rather better break-up song, and “‘Slut!'” appears to be a song about the reaction from her famous boyfriend’s fans.
The X-Axis – w/c 30 October 2023
This is the quietest week we’ve had in a long time.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #111. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Lynne Yoshii, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. This is the final part of “The Redroot Saga”, which feeds back into the opening scene of this week’s X-Men. Sunfire rescues Redroot and escapes while badly injured and… uh, yeah, that’s basically it. It looks fine, and the dialogue makes a brave stab at telling us that this is some sort of story about hope and perseverance, but… when you get down to it, Sunfire went to find Redroot, and found her, and had a fight with some bad guys, and left with her. This feels a lot like a story that was invented mainly in order to give someone a side quest they could pursue, to set up for Redroot returning and doing something or other in X-Men Red to wake up Arakko and turn the tide against Genesis. Or maybe to bring back Redroot and Cypher at the same time. But as a story in its own right, it runs up against the fact that Sunfire’s not very interesting – or at least, the things that are interesting about him have nothing to do with hunting for a twig in Otherworld.
X-MEN #28. (Annotations here.) Well, there’s quite a lot going on here. We’ve got Sunfire feeding back into the regular title from the Infinity Comics and, weirdly, being picked up by Apocalypse – which suggests that his plot is heading off to X-Men Red, and leaves me wondering what this scene is doing here. I do like Joshua Cassara’s Otherworld, though, which is pleasingly trippy.
