Marauders #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS vol 2 #8
“Here Comes Yesterday, part 2”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A rather nice pin-up of Fang, Psylocke and Aurora by Peach Momoko. Nothing specifically to do with the story, but very pretty.
PAGE 2. Obituary for Tom Palmer.
PAGE 3. Flashback: The Threshold Three are sent into the future.
The unnamed character speaking here is Grove, who was named in the previous issue and identified as the leader of the uninfected Thresholders. The three characters that they’re sending into the future are Theia, Amass and Crave, the three Thresholders who were revived in the present day in the previous issue.
Wolverine #27 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #27
“The Beast Agenda: Skulls”
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 with Beast’s control collar around his next.
PAGES 2-4. Wolverine is resurrected.
We left off last issue with Wolverine imprisoned by Legacy House and the Beast bidding for the opportunity to kill him. We pick up that scene later on in a flashback, but for now, this is Logan being resurrected on Krakoa. It’s a routine enough event that only Hope and Tempus show up. When the Krakoa era started, resurrections were a huge deal with a quasi-religious ceremony (admittedly, mostly for the first return from the dead). Mind you, if they made a song and dance about every resurrection of X-Force, then it’d probably look a bit bleak to the mutant in the street.
House to Astonish Episode 200
Or “Goodness me, is it that time already?”
To quote the Bard, it’s been a long road, getting from there to here, but we’ve made it to episode 200 of House to Astonish, and we’re indulging in our traditional vices of cake and fizz, and talking about Vault Comics’ Headshell line, Titan’s new Conan series, Joe Kelly and Kim Niimura’s Immortal Sergeant, and Ty Templeton’s cancer-free all-clear. We’re also reviewing a bunch of comics on a theme, as we look at Batman #200, House of Mystery #200, Amazing Spider-Man #200, and, er, Deadpool #58? And as always, the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is ringing in the new. All this plus the villainy of Soupface, the world’s least efficient purse-snatching scheme, and a small haystack that looks like a big haystack.
As we recorded this episode on Sunday evening, the news hadn’t yet broken of the incredibly sad loss of Kevin O’Neill, an absolute giant of British comics. We’ll have more to say about him on a future episode.
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. And has there ever been a better time to snag yourself one of our gorgeous t-shirts from our Redbubble store? Depends on your personal circumstances, I guess?
The Incomplete Wolverine – 2006
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005
We left off in the aftermath of House of M. Almost all mutants have been depowered by the Scarlet Witch – though by a happy coincidence, almost all the main characters happen to be exceptions, including Wolverine. On top of that, Wolverine has regained all of his memories. That took us through to the “Origins and Endings” arc from Wolverine vol 3 #36-40, where Daniel Way kicked off his Wolverine: Origins storyline. That arc already took us through to March 2006, but it continues into Origins itself. And that arc runs for a good long while before allowing a break in the action. So…
WOLVERINE: ORIGINS #1-5
“Born in Blood”
by Daniel Way, Steve Dillon & Dan Kemp
April to August 2006
Origins is Wolverine’s second ongoing monthly series, running for 50 issues and attempting to tie his back story into a coherent whole. On that score, it was a failure. It ties everything into a byzantine conspiracy arc involving Romulus, which has barely been mentioned since, presumably because nobody finds Romulus very inspiring. But it would be unfair to say that nothing in Origins matters. It also introduced Daken, and he’s still appearing prominently today.
In the opening arc, Wolverine starts hunting down people who were part of the conspiracy that exploited him in the past. He feels that he’s done terrible things in his life, that it’s no excuse that he wasn’t in control of his mind, and that he’s beyond redemption – but that’s not going to stop him from taking revenge. We establish that Logan started as a thug for the conspiracy, but went on to become a handler who treated other people the same way in a cycle of abuse. One of his victims, Nuke, resurfaces to lure Wolverine out. Wolverine defeats Nuke, but Captain America shows up to stop Wolverine from killing him. Wolverine beats up Cap, then gives the Muramasa Blade (which he retrieved in the previous arc) to the X-Men for safe keeping. Finally, he heads off in search of his long lost son Daken, believing that the conspirators are planning to engineer a fight between them.
Charts – 4 November 2022
Taylor Swift, it turns out, can dominate the top 10 for two weeks in a row.
Two weeks. The parent album “Midnights” remains at number one for a second week. The other two tracks that charted from it, “Lavender Haze” and “Snow on the Beach”, drop out of the top five… but only to numbers 6 and 8.
3. Rihanna – “Lift Me Up”
Huh. And there was me thinking that a new Rihanna single was bound to be challenging for number one. She hasn’t had a single out, even as a guest vocalist, since 2020 (when she appeared on a PartyNextDoor single that got to number 12). She hasn’t released a single of her own since 2016. So you’d think this would be a bigger deal. I mean, number 3 is quite a big deal. But bigger.
X-Men Red #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED #8
“Mission to the Unknown”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Madibek Musibekov
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Cable fighting Orbis Stellaris (or rather, Orbis serving as the head of the giant body).
PAGES 2-4. Cable and Khora recruit Weaponless Zsen.
Gosnell’s Bar is a bar which appeared in several issues of Al Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy run.
Weaponless Zsen was last seen in Legion of X #5, where she left Nightcrawler a letter and signed up to work as an interstellar mercenary. As she says, she managed to leave the planet just before a massive war broke out – Legion #5 ended with Uranos showing up to attack Arakko.
This scene confirms that she’s the daughter of the Fisher King and sister of Khora, as very strongly implied by a data page in issue #6. Fisher King “returned from his shadows” in issues #6-7 when the Night Seats members of the Great Ring resurfaced in the wake of Uranos’s attack. We don’t know yet why she and Fisher King aren’t talking.
Charts – 28 October 2022
The chart rules were changed a few years back to limit the number of tracks by the same artist to three, after Ed Sheeran and Drake managed to swamp the top ten. In practice, not that many acts have shown the ability to swamp the top end of the chart when they release a new album. But there are some.
1. Taylor Swift – “Anti-Hero”
3. Taylor Swift – “Lavender Haze”
4. Taylor Swift featuring Lana Del Rey – “Snow On The Beach”
The maximum three tracks from “Midnights”, which obviously enters the album chart at number 1. It’s her ninth consecutive number one album, including her re-recordings of “Fearless” and “Red”, as well as the two folk-style albums she released during the pandemic. With “Midnights”, we’re back to mainstream pop and songs about her celebrity status, which is… kind of what I was glad to see her moving away from? “Anti-Hero” is one of her better songs in that mode, but it still feels like a step backwards.
New Mutants #31 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #31
“The Sublime Saga, part one: Fate & Consequences”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Artists: Alberto Alburquerque with Ro Stein & Ted Brandt
Colourists: Carlos Lopez with Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Escapade as all of the New Mutants, while Emma Frost rolls her eyes.
PAGE 2. Obituary for Tom Palmer
PAGES 3-5. The New Mutants try to teach creative writing, and Emma comes to talk about Escapade.
This is continuing with the main theme of Vita Ayala’s run, with the New Mutants taking on the role of mentors for the younger generations of teen mutants. The depiction of an actual classroom is new for Krakoa; at the start of the Krakoan era, we were told that the place was running on some sort of experimental-progressive education model where everyone taught one another. That apparently didn’t go so well, leading to the New Mutants moving in to give the place a bit more structure – and now it seems we’re back to regular classrooms and English literature classes.
Wolverine #26 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #26
“The Beast Agenda: The Off Days”
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, with Beast in the background, and Jeff Bannister and the Merchant in the foreground.
PAGE 2. Obituary for Tom Palmer
PAGES 3-5. Montage: Wolverine has glimpses of normalcy in the middle of fights.
The action sequences are generic and don’t represent any particular story. Page 3 is the late 1970s X-Men fighting robots; page 4 is Wolverine and Spider-Man fighting symbiotes; and page 5 is Wolverine and family (Daken, Laura and Scout) taking on Donald Pierce, Lady Deathstrike and the Reavers.
PAGE 6. Recap and credits.
A.X.E.: Judgment Day #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #6
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artists: Valerio Schiti with Ivan Fiorelli
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER / PAGE 1: Members of the X-Men, Avengers and Eternals giving the thumbs down sign (presumably their verdict on the Progenitor).
PAGE 2. Obituary for Mike Pasciullo.
PAGES 3-4. Recap and credits.
PAGES 5-6. Captain America brings Jada to the Eternals’ city.
Jada is still sitting in the place where she was talking to Captain America last issue (and still has the Starbucks coffee that she shared with him). Seems awfully quiet for New York, but obviously the scene works better when she’s not just a face in the crowd.
PAGE 7. The civilians react.
Everyone has some degree of turning point or realisation by the end of this, with the possible exception of Komali, who is just resigned to death. Tom finally and decisively realises that he’s got it wrong, albeit too late to do anything about it. Katrina actually does something instead of just talking about it. Daniela had already turned her focus to her family, even if she remains somewhat distracted by practicalities. Jada gets to reconnect with someone (which is another reason why she couldn’t be in a crowd in the last scene) and Kenta is forced to take the situation seriously.
