X-Men Red #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #4
”Three Short Stories About Death”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artists: Juann Cabal, Andrés Genolet & Michael Sta. Maria
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer & Production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller withJay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Sunspot is resurrected at the feet of Rockslide.
PAGE 2. The Great Ring begin their discussion.
Magneto took the “Seat of Loss” – Tarn’s seat – by killing him last issue.
PAGE 3. Recap and credits. The “Meanwhile, elsewhere in the cosmos” paragraph relates to events from other books. The “recent assassination of the Shi’ar empress and Xavier’s daughter, Xandra”, is the as-yet-unresolved cliffhanger of Marauders #3. The “secret of mutant resurrection [was] revealed on Earth” in X-Men #12.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #41
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #41
“Birthday Side Quest”
Writer & artist: Jason Loo
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Lauren Amaro
It feels like only yesterday that I reviewed Jason Loo’s last single-issue Unlimited story, the one where Lila Cheney went speed dating. Actually, that was issue #28, and it came out in March…but it took me a while to get around to reviewing it.
This is very much in the same vein. It’s Jubilee’s birthday; she invites her former teammates from Generation X to join her in a fantasy-themed escape room. You might wonder whether Jubilee doesn’t have any other friends than the people she hung out with in a series from more than twenty years ago, who she might want to spend her birthday with… but then again, most of the candidates are currently in Knights of X, so maybe she doesn’t. Anyway, Jubilee wants to do it in full cosplay, and nobody else is really on board with that. And only about half the team show up, though that’s probably a good move given how many characters that would be.
If you remember the Lila Cheney story, you probably know where this is heading. There’s a bit of light comedy. Loo’s art is really good at that kind of thing – one thing this story does really well is make these characters look like old friends hanging out. But it’s got the same basic problem as the Lila story – rather than just commit to making “they hang out and that’s entertaining” into a plot, it randomly throws in a bunch of anti-mutant bigots in the second half so that the heroes can beat them up. That’s all a bit generic, and it doesn’t resolve anything that was set up in the first part of the story. Once again, it feels like Loo didn’t actually have an ending for the gentle character comedy he had set up, and just reached for the stock X-Men ending of the Krakoan era.
Yes, I get it, it’s satisfying when the bad guys get beaten up. But it’d be even more satisfying if it had something to do with the first half of the issue.
Marvel’s Voices: Iceman Infinity Comic
MARVEL’S VOICES: ICEMAN INFINITY COMIC #1-4
Writer, artist & colourist: Luciano Vecchio
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
This is the second Iceman story that Luciano Vecchio has done for the Infinity Comics line, the first being the catchily titled Mighty Marvel Holiday Special: Iceman’s New Year Resolutions Infinity Comic #1. That’s the one with the ball drop moment, which I still think is one of the cleverest uses of the vertical scroll format I’ve seen.
Now he gets four issues – which equate to something closer to one and a half regular comics – under the Marvel’s Voices banner. The Marvel’s Voices anthologies are, let’s be honest, a bit patchy. For every good story there’s a vignette in which a character tells us, very directly, how important their identity is to them, without the burdensome obstacle of a plot. Still, patchiness is to be expected, because they’re Marvel anthologies. Very short stories are deceptively tricky to make work, and when you couple that with a remit to do identity-related stories, there’s an inevitable risk of hitting the point so directly that it feels very heavy handed. I’d rather see things given a bit more time to breathe.
Iceman does get a bit more room to breathe, over the course of four issues. But that’s four Infinite Comics issues, which doesn’t quite translate to regular issues. When Marvel collected the first four issues of X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic in print, as X-Men Unlimited: Latitude, the solicitations say it clocked in at 64 pages. That’s roughly three regular issues.
Charts – 24 June 2022
In which a couple of surprise releases avoid a completely dead week.
1. Kate Bush – “Running Up That Hill”
Two weeks. It’s actually slightly up from last week, but I suspect that’s driven partly by the publicity from it actually making number one last week.
7. Drake featuring 21 Savage – “Jimmy Cooks”
8. Drake – “Massive”
10. Drake – “Falling Back”
Knights of X #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
KNIGHTS OF X #3
“Kill Your Darlings”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Bob Quinn
Colourist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Designer: Tom Muller
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Gambit in flamboyant action. The other tarot cards show seem to show Besty, Betsy & Rachel, and Mordred. The Betsy/Rachel card has a “VI” number on it, most likely intended to be the Lovers (the sixth card of the Major Arcana). Yes, there’s a prominent sword on display, but the Six of Swords is a rather boring card showing a ferryman in the Slough of Despond, which doesn’t seem terribly relevant.
PAGE 2 to PAGE 3 PANEL 1. Roma and Saturnyne take Shogo to watch the fight.
As in previous issues, this book seems quite keen to have its scene transitions in mid-page. And as before, we’re being told that Otherworld is basically a story-driven place – in the sense that the rules of story literally govern how things work there, and so Shogo needs to undergo the trauma of seeing one of the heroes die in order that his story can move on.
New Mutants #26 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #26
“The Labors of Magik, Book Two: Best Laid Plans…”
Writer: Vita Ayala
Artist: Rod Reis (main story) & Jan Duursema (flashbacks)
Colourists: Rod Reis (main story) & Ruth Redmond (flashbacks)
Letterer & production: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Brown
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Magik with a broken sword, surrounded by shattered images from her past. The demons on the right are Belasco and presumably S’ym. The horned figure on the left is presumably Magik herself in demonic form. The armoured figure in the top left is Magik in the full armour that she had in “Inferno”.
PAGES 2-3. Magik, Dani, Rahne and Madelyne in the wilderness.
Basically just recapping the plot from last issue.
PAGE 4. Recap and credits.
PAGE 5. Storybook page: the “Goblin Exile” fights the techno-organic demons.
Continuing the storybook pages from last issue, where the “Little Goblin” was at least principally Magik (though the name is surely no coincidence bearing in mind that Madelyne is the former “Goblin Queen”). This is the alt-timeline older Magik that we’re about to encounter, defending her corner of Limbo from the techno-organics.
Immortal X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #3
“The New Testament of Irene Adler”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Dijjo Lima
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Destiny, with most of the other Quiet Council members shown within her cloak.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Irene Adler’s powers emerge.
This is a more dramatic version of page 13 panel 4 of X-Treme X-Men vol 1 #1. As narrated by Sage in the original scene, “Irene Adler was a child of privilege, born to an age when science and romance walked hand in hand and into a society that felt its birthright was to rule the world. When she was 13, her mutant power became active. She gained the ability to perceive the future, in all its myriad permutations. It came upon her with a terrible rush and an irresistible force, like an avalanche threatening to overwhelm the girl.”
X-Men #12 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #12
“Controlled Demolition”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Pepe Larraz
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Just the X-Men posing in their tree.
PAGES 2-5. Cyclops fights Dr Stasis.
Cyclops initially assumes that Dr Stasis is an agent of Mr Sinister. Given his reaction, it doesn’t seem as if he was ever exactly on board with having Sinister in the Quiet Council (and why would he, given that he spent some of his childhood in Sinister’s orphanage and doesn’t exactly have happy memories of it).
The display case contains the fake EMT gear that Dr Stasis wore when he killed Cyclops in issue #7. He already had it in the case at the end of that issue.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #35-40
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #35-40
“Eany Come Home”
Writer: Alex Paknadel
Artist: Julian Shaw
Colourist: Dono Sánchez-Almara
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Lauren Amaro
If you’re going to have an entire series that’s exclusive to Marvel Unlimited, and you don’t want to do anything too important to continuity that might infuriate non-subscribers, then you may as well take the chance to do stories about little-used characters. And lo! A Maggott six-parter! That’s not something you get to say often!
Okay, granted, it’s an Infinity Comic. So when we say “six-parter” we actually mean something closer to “two-parter” in regular comics. But still, Maggott’s usually lucky if he gets any parts at all. I’m not sure he’s actually done anything bigger than a cameo since being killed off in Weapon X in 2003. You kind of wonder why he was even brought back. Maybe he was so obscure that everyone forgot he was dead.
Or maybe people kind of like the guy and didn’t really want him to be cannon fodder. He’s got a reputation as an awful character, but there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with him. He’s a weird concept – a guy with an external digestive system in the form of two semi-autonomous slug thingies, Eany and Meany that can eat through anything and power him up afterwards – and it’s probably fair to say that the early stories trying to make this seem fascinating and tragic didn’t quite land. But the idea is fine. And maybe it feels a lot less eccentric in 2022 than it did in 1997.
Charts – 17 June 2022
Well, no one saw this coming a few weeks ago.
1. Kate Bush – “Running Up That Hill”
Climbing to number one in its third week on chart, though it would have been there last week if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s an archive record whose streams are given lower weighting than new releases. Harry Styles’ “As It Was”, which drops to number 2 this week, is on its eleventh week of release and may have been hit by the downweighting rule this week too – but for once, that would just restore a level playing field. (EDIT: In fact, the chart compilers allowed Kate Bush’s label to invoke the “exceptional cases” rule and have the track treated as a new release – but Harry Styles’ sales haven’t been falling long enough for him to get hit by downweighting, so both tracks still remain on a level playing field.)
This is Kate Bush’s second UK number one, the first being her debut “Wuthering Heights” in 1978. “Running Up That Hill” reached number 3 on its initial release in 1985. This allows the chart company to claim a string of unlikely records for her. It’s the longest ever gap between number 1 singles by the same artist, at 44 years – the previous record is 42, held by Tom Jones. Mind you, he did it with two original records. But then again, the second one was a guest appearance on a Comic Relief single (“Barry Islands in the Stream” by Vanessa Jenkins & Bryn West featuring Tom Jones and Robin Gibb, from 2009). The record for the longest gap between number ones going purely by new releases for an active artist is held by Kylie Minogue, who had no number one hits between “Tears on my Pillow” in 1990, and “Spinning Around” in 2000, even though she kept having hits throughout.
