House to Astonish Episode 121
I’ve got a cold but comics doesn’t stand still while people blow their noses, so we’re soldiering on with a fresh new episode of House to Astonish. This time round, we talk about the Comixology hack; Archie’s new CCO (and new writer); Boom!’s new director and their Big Trouble in Little China series; the IDW Cartoon Network crossover; the new writers of Thunderbolts; Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore’s Leaving Megalopolis moving to Dark Horse; Titan’s new Doctor Who ongoing series; Skottie Young’s Rocket Raccoon; the Stan & Sharon Sakai benefit auctions (which are here) and Eric Stephenson’s speech to ComicsPRO. We’ve also got reviews of Moon Knight, Evil Empire and The Auteur, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is neither swings nor roundabouts. All this plus Satanism With Sabrina, rapper-hunting robots and the Man of a Thousand Handles.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
And hey, spring is coming in – what better way to mark that than with a House to Astonish t-shirt from our Spring Collection? It’s the same as our Winter Collection but please don’t tell anyone.
Charts – 2 March 2014
A quiet week for new releases, coupled with a surprise number 1 that breaks a few records…
35. Kid Ink featuring Chris Brown – “Show Me”
Rebounding from last week’s number 75 to get a third run in the top 40. Not sure what’s going on here. It’s certainly hung around a while for a song that never made it above 23.
26. Starship – “We Built This City”
Wolverine and the X-Men #42 – “Graduated?”
The end of the road, then. It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on Wolverine and the X-Men, which wraps up Jason Aaron’s run with two epilogue issues, in advance of next week’s (!) relaunch with Latour and Asrar.
While Aaron may be sticking around over on Amazing X-Men, which shares a similarly relaxed attitude to sanity, this is more than just creator reshuffling. Despite its name, Wolverine and the X-Men was never really about Wolverine and the X-Men at all. It was about the school. Marvel finally got a book about the trainees to work – albeit by the slightly questionable device of marketing it as something else. Unsurprisingly, the final issue goes for the ever popular graduation day theme – an excellent way of marking a symbolic turning point for some of the characters while leaving the school in place to grind happily on for the next creative team.
Charts – 23 February 2014
It’s time for the annual Brit Awards chart. This has become a regular feature of the download era, as the primetime awards show reminds people of records they’d forgotten to buy, or actually allows them to download live performances that duly propel songs back into the chart. Even though the ratings were the lowest in years, they’re still enough to have some impact on the lower half of the top 40.
For example…
39. The Arctic Monkeys – “Do I Wanna Know”
Originally a number 11 hit last June. The Arctic Monkeys won Best British Group. Oddly, this isn’t the song they performed on the show – that was 2012’s “R U Mine?”, which re-enters at 55.
Uncanny X-Men #17 – “You’re in the Middle of Nowhere”
Hanging over Brian Bendis’ X-Men run is the spectre of his Avengers run, in which a bunch of seemingly disparate plot threads ultimately turned out, after several years, not to even gesture vaguely in the direction of coming together.
His X-Men stories have generally done a rather better job of giving the impression that there’s a coherent plan to it all, even if it does often seem like one that could speed up a bit. But every so often you have to wonder.
Elimination Chamber 2014
Elimination Chamber is an unusual show, more for what’s going on in the wider business than for the actual card. On Monday, the WWE launches its online streaming service, WWE Network, which will offer all the future “pay-per-views” as part of the subscription – a subscription which massively undercuts the cost of actually buying them as PPVs. Subscribers will also get access to a substantial video-on-demand library, plus some original programming (though the only notable inclusion is the developmental show NXT, which is genuinely quite good these days). This is all for viewers in the US, by the way; the international launch isn’t for a while yet.
In effect, the WWE is abandoning the PPV platform, and these shows will become monthly specials designed to draw new viewers to the Network. In practice, anyone who’s remotely interested in the Network is likely to sign up in advance of Wrestlemania next month, and in the short term the company’s main revenue source is likely to be rights fees from TV contracts (which, incidentally, are all coming for renegotiation right now) – so there’s going to be an interesting tension between grabbing the ratings and steering people to the Network.
House to Astonish Episode 120
It’s a big week for movie news, as House to Astonish looks at the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer, the potential Black Widow movie and the Fantastic Four casting, as well as ReedPop’s new New York convention and the May solicitations (no, we didn’t do Dark Horse, but you could probably write those yourself). There are also reviews of Undertow, New Warriors and Loki: Ragnarok and Roll, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a horny devil. All this plus Oprah’s Skrulls, an intervention for a comics company and All-New Steeltown Rockers.
The episode is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email, or through our Facebook fan page, and don’t forget about our super-cool shirts available at our Redbubble store.
Charts – 16 February 2014
An interesting day for the charts, as the BBC has just announced that streaming services are going to be incorporated into the top 40. There are obvious questions of weighting here, but the basic idea of counting audiences on streaming services is plainly right. Judging from the OCC’s existing streaming chart, the main impact will be to slow the charts down; it’ll be interesting to see how they do the weighting.
As for this week’s chart, we may be a first – a top 40 with two records deemed completely unbroadcastable by the Radio 1 chart show.
40. Nina Nesbitt – “Selfies”
X-Men Legacy #19-24 – “For We Are Many”
As the second wave of Marvel NOW launches hits the stands, one of the more interesting products of the first wave draws to a conclusion. While the sales of X-Men Legacy rather suggest that it would not have been long for this world anyway, it feels as if Simon Spurrier’s story has come to its natural conclusion anyway. There’s no sense here of things being cut short; on the contrary, this seems to be the pay-off of everything the series has been building to this point.
