The X-Axis: w/c 17 April 2023
Well, look, it was a very heavy week for new releases, and on top of that I started late…
NIGHTCRAWLERS #3. (Annotations here.) You’ll have picked up that one thing I really like about the “Sins of Sinister” crossover is the way it plays with the trope of the cosmic reset button and specifically asks why any of it matters. Part of the answer is that even if it’s all a dead end so far as the narrative is concerned, it’s very important to the characters who’ve lived and died over the centuries in this reality, and there’s something slightly horrifying about the idea of casually rebooting it all. Another answer is that Sinister always planned to send back the facts of this timeline so that it could affect what happens next time round, and Mother Righteous is thinking along very similar lines. Nightcrawlers also “matters” for another reason: it gives us a clearer understanding of Mother Righteous, building on what’s been teased about her so far in Legion of X. So I’m more than happy with this issue, which delivers nicely on all those counts. Granted, there’s a lot of background characters who are arguably underdeveloped, and Vox Ignis’s turn feels rushed… but it works.
X-FORCE #39. (Annotations here.) Mmm. This is a mixed bag. On the plus side, I like the idea of Sage taking over to try and fix the direction of X-Force – even if she comes across as a little naive. And the Quiet Council deciding that as long as Beast is only going after enemies of the state, he’s not exactly a priority… kind of works, I guess? The Colossus storyline seems to finally be going somewhere too, and with Fall of X around the corner, you figure it’s coming to a climax. On the other hand, while I’m all for bringing in Laura rather than having Logan in two books, Percy doesn’t seem to get the character at all. You can’t do “I am a loner yet I am moved by the chance to be a hero” with someone who literally just finished a year in the X-Men. Plus, Laura is just not a character who does drinking games that involve stabbing people. So in practice, I’m not at all encouraged about bringing her in.
New Mutants: Lethal Legion #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #2
“Terrible Decisions”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciller: Enid Balám
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Escapade in front of a Lethal Legion recruitment poster, having apparently swapped roles with Grim Reaper – who isn’t in this story, but did have an involvement with an earlier version of the Lethal Legion. The papers blowing around her include photos of Dani, Rahne and Gabby.
PAGES 2-4. Wolfsbane and Morgan flee into an underground survivalist camp.
They disturbed this thing last issue, while hunting for potentially useful technology in an abandoned underground lab that once belonged to Spencer Smythe. It seems to be just some Thing Living In The Tunnels.
They stumble into what seems to be some sort of anti-mutant survivalist camp, hiding away from some sort of mutant-related apocalypse. So far as we can tell from this issue, this bunch seem relatively harmless – they really do just want to hide away in the tunnels and sit out the end of the world.
X-Force #39 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #39
“Internal Affairs”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Colossus and Wolverine (Laura) in action.
PAGES 2-7. The Quiet Council discuss the Beast.
Wolverine‘s appearance here is a direct repeat of page 11 of Wolverine #32. In the original scene, Wolverine has just marched into the Quiet Council chamber and dumped the body of the Beast (complete with the fungal boobytraps seen earlier in that issue). Wolverine complains about Beast being given “carte blanche”, and refuses Professor X’s request to talk about it privately. That scene ends with the first three lines of dialogue here. Wolverine’s brief exchange with Sage as he leaves the room is new.
The Quiet Council. As in Wolverine #32, Nightcrawler and Mr Sinister are both missing, without explanation. This avoids the need to address their status quo changes in Legion of X and Immortal X-Men.
Nightcrawlers #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NIGHTCRAWLERS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 10: The Sacred Heart”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artists: Lorenzo Tammetta & Phillip Sevy
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Mother Righteous, in front of a Ghost Rider-possessed Galactus.
PAGE 2. Mother Righteous recaps the last few centuries.
The Silver Mercator is apparently some kind of hybrid of the Silver Surfer and Mr M (most recently seen in Knights of X).
The Low Key Corps appear to be some sort of collection of alternate versions of Loki, perhaps under reference to the Loki variants seen in his TV show. The name seems to imply something akin to the Council of Cross-Time Kangs.
Auntie Fortune is the Nightcrawler chimera based on Domino, as seen in the previous two issues. As Righteous says, she was one of the first Nightcrawler chimeras to be recruited. We saw her in the previous issue as a frail old woman – apparently she’s been kept around as some sort of ghost (she appears to be see-through), perhaps for her symbolic value as an original. The thing floating next to her is presumably one of the Cortez lanterns mentioned in issue #1, which use the brain tissue of the late Fabian Cortez to provide power boosts.
House to Astonish Episode 202
Somehow it’s taken us four months to put out a regular format episode of House to Astonish, but we’re here now, and we’re remembering Al Jaffee and Rachel Pollack, talking about all the upcoming Fall of X and Knight Terrors books, enjoying Mark Waid’s mini-renaissance at DC and dissecting the digital drops of DSTLRY. We’re also reviewing The Great British Bump-Off and Guardians of the Galaxy and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. All this plus Slovakia’s Finest Punctuation Marks, Woolverine and a mincemeat omelette.
You can get the podcast here, or 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 hey! You! You over there, without a t-shirt! You know what would solve your problem about not having a t-shirt? A t-shirt!
Charts – 14 April 2023
So apparently Ellie Goulding is still a thing.
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
That’s two weeks, which is way outperforming expectations. Ellie Goulding’s longest running number one was “Love Me Like You Do”, which had four weeks back in 2015. But her album “Higher Than Heaven” also enters the album chart at number one… despite it not including “Miracle” and having no hit singles of its own. That shouldn’t surprise me too much – four of Ellie Goulding’s five albums have now reached number one, and the fifth (2015’s “Delirium”) was just unlucky – it got to number 3 and actually had higher first week sales than the other four.
2020’s “Brightest Blue” did get to number one, and couldn’t get any singles into the top 75 either. None of the singles from “Higher Than Heaven” have actually made the top 100. This was the lead single from the album, which you’ve almost certainly never heard before. It came out nine months ago. To be fair, it was a moderate hit in some European countries. It reached number 11 in Finland.
5. Drake – “Search & Rescue”
Yes, that’s the whole video.
The X-Axis: w/c 10 April 2023
Okay, you seem to approve of this. Let’s stick with it.
STORM & THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #3. (Annotations here.) The risk with “Sins of Sinister” and its vast timescales is that everything becomes a little bit abstract. Sometimes the crossover has played off that very effectively – I’ve noted before the way that we’re obviously inclined to root for the cosmic reset button to be hit, yet the hero character refuse to play ball by lying down and letting their universe be destroyed. But this issue feels a bit too remote. Sinister’s role is kept fairly small, and our main focus is on Jon Ironside as Storm’s heir, accepting Mr Sinister’s proposal to resurrect her. The tension here, in theory, is between Ironside’s faith in Storm – which he seems to have adopted in part as penance for something that went badly wrong when he doubted her in the past – and the Arakkii culture of rejecting resurrection, with Storm herself as one of the most explicit cases of that. But Ironside has always felt more like a trope than a character, and I have trouble getting very invested in him. It might also be that Ewing’s cosmic-scaled concepts aren’t such a good fit with Alessandro Vitti’s art, which feels better suited to something more intimate. Either way, this didn’t really click for me.
X-MEN #21. (Annotations here.) This is part of a curiously structured crossover with Captain Marvel, which involves two completely unrelated Brood storylines that seem to come together in the final chapter – which will be Captain Marvel #49. Other than the fact that they involve groups of Brood being freed from Broo’s control by Nightmare, the two arcs don’t seem to be connected in any particular way, and thus far, buying the Captain Marvel issues hasn’t notably added to the experience of reading the X-Men ones. It feels a bit more like the books came up with unrelated Brood stories by coincidence and then decided to try and tie them together after the fact, instead of tossing a coin. Maybe Captain Marvel #49 will prove me wrong.
Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #3
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 9: The Song of the End”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Alessandro Vitti
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A symbolic image of a godlike Sorm with a hazy crowd looking up at her.
PAGE 2. Establishing shot of the World Farm.
It was on fire when Mr Sinister arrived at it in Immoral X-Men #3 – apparently, this is just its standard appearance.
The narration follows the 6-4-5 syllable pattern of Lodus Logos’s dialogue in X-Men Red – the “Great Lodus” referred to here.
The Storm System. In Immortal X-Men #3, Destiny’s vision of possible future timelines includes “the Storm System” as one possible end point, following “the Empire of the Red Diamond”.
PAGE 3. Jon Ironside and Khora.
“What Arakko once meant – what it’s come to mean again”. The inhabitants of the World Farm consider themselves the continuation of Arakki culture, since they’re based on the survivors of the original Arakko’s destruction. Prior to relocating to our dimension, Arakko spent centuries in eternal war in the dimension of Amenth; as this particular timeline has turned out, the society’s relatively peaceful time on Mars turned out to be a blip.
X-Men #21 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #21
“Lord of the Brood, part three”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Cyclops and Rogue fight the Brood. This continues the fight scene which has been shown over the covers of recent issues of X-Men and Captain Marvel (which is where Rogue has been appearing).
In Captain Marvel #47, Captain Marvel’s team defeat a bunch of Brood and rescue Rogue. Binary is found hooked up to some sort of organic machinery. In what might politely be termed a high degree of plot convenience, it turns out that Binary can only be freed if someone else takes her place, and Captain Marvel duly makes the required heroic sacrifice. Rogue explains that the Brood faction in the Captain Marvel arc are led by a Brood Empress who resents Broo’s control over them and took the opportunity to break free of him when it arose. (X-Men has established that this was brought about by Nightmare, but the Captain Marvel cast don’t know this yet.) The Empress blames the Kree for creating the King Egg that gave Broo control over her race in X-Men vol 5 #9, and has a convoluted scheme to convert superheroes into Brood in order to use them as an army against the Kree; the part-Kree Captain Marvel is particularly key to this plot. The issue ends with the heroes largely defeated and a groggy Captain Marvel apparently unable to register the giant Brood Empress looming over her.
Charts – 7 April 2023
Ah. This wasn’t in the script.
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
So, last week, “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus was finally knocked off number 1 after ten weeks by Ed Sheeran’s new single “Eyes Closed”. I did flag that it had only made it to number one thanks to the boost from first-week pre-orders of the CD single, which is very much a fanbase product, but as it turns out, it drops to number three this week. Threading their way to the top instead are Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding, with a single that’s been out for four weeks.
This is Calvin Harris’s eleventh number one single, counting guest appearances. The others are Dizzee Rascal’s “Dance Wiv Me” (2008), “I’m Not Alone” (2009), Rihanna’s “We Found Love” (2011), “Sweet Nothing” (2012), “Under Control” (2013), “Summer” (2014), “Blame” (2017), “Feels” (2017), “One Kiss” (2018) and “Promises” (2018). So it’s been five years, and he now has number 1s spanning a period of 15 years.
