Charts – 20 November 2020
Another quiet week on the singles chart, beyond a couple of major releases…
Four weeks, though apparently this one was very close – the equivalent of just a few hundred sales. “34+35” and “POV” are still on the chart, at 17 and 19 respectively.
2. Billie Eilish – “Therefore I Am”
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine: 1976
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
Last time, we entered Wolverine’s early years of publication. Now, let’s travel back to a strange time before Wolverine was a breakout character, and before the creators were all that bothered about him.
And for reasons I’ll explain, we kick off 1976 with an issue from 1977…
X-MEN vol 1 #106
“Dark Shroud of the Past!”
by Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton
August 1977
The X-Men fight psychic projections of the original team, subconsciously created by Professor X’s evil side during one of his nightmares. (These nightmares are a major subplot in the first couple of years of X-Men, but they don’t directly affect Wolverine. Basically, they’re the result of a botched psychic message to Professor X, foreshadowing the introduction of the Shi’ar.)
This is a fill-in issue, which explicitly takes place shortly after Moira arrives at the X-Men Mansion – even though it didn’t see print for over a year after that point. Although it appeared with a framing sequence by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, Wolverine doesn’t appear in that bit, so we won’t be coming back to this issue again. There’s a bit of character work at the start: Cyclops accuses Wolverine of putting on a “mad killer” act, while Wolverine complains that Cyclops has been pushing the team too hard ever since Thunderbird died. Banshee chips in to agree, just so we know that the brattish Wolverine actually has a point for a change.
Juggernaut #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
JUGGERNAUT #3
“Stuck in the Past”
by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Garney & Matt Milla
COVER / PAGE 1. The Juggernaut replacing a broken statue of Lady Justice, and weighing sand in her scales.
PAGE 2. This issue’s kind-of-sort-of recap page is referencing Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 #230 (July 1982), in which Juggernaut is trying to abduct Madame Web, and winds up fighting Spider-Man on a construction site. Unable to actually hurt Juggernaut, Spider-Man defeats him by luring him into newly-poured concrete foundations which apparently go down 40 feet or so, leading him to sink to the bottom. He was indeed stuck there for quite some time – his next published appearance was in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #183, two years later – though previous stories have given it as anything from a month to six months.
(more…)Cable #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CABLE vol 4 #6
“X of Swords, Chapter 19”
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
COVER / PAGE 1. Generic pin-up of Cable and other characters from “X of Swords” (including Betsy, who’s been absent from the plot for several chapters now).
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Cyclops. The point here, of course, is that generally Scott is giving teen Cable fairly conventional advice, but in this issue Cable is fretting that the older, more experienced Cable that he forcibly replaced would have been much better suited to the occasion.
(more…)Hellions #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLIONS #6
“X of Swords, Chapter 18”
by Zeb Wells, Carmen Carnero & David Curiel
COVER / PAGE 1. Tarn the Uncaring stands over the defeated Hellions.
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Tarn, which pretty much speaks for itself. Tarn is (presumably) a new character – for what it’s worth, the Marvel Universe does have a previous Tarn, who was a minor Spaceknight, but that’s probably just coincidence. Oh, and a tarn is a small mountain lake.
Note that Hellions normally opens with an epigraph from Nightcrawler. I suppose Tarn gets the slot here because they’re such a long way from home.
(more…)X-Force #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #14
“X of Swords, Chapter 17”
by Benjamin Percy, Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine holding up his new Muramasa blade, with Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl and the Beast shown in reflection – which has nothing much to do with any scene in the issue.
PAGES 2-3. Magik fights Pogg Ur-Pogg.
“Things are about to get busy.” As we’ll see in Cable #6, there are apparently 25 battles in total. We’ve already had six of them, and this issue takes us up all the way through to battle 22. So it’s something of a montage issue.
(more…)Review: Wolverine #1-5
WOLVERINE vol 7 #1-5
issues #1-3 by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert & Frank Martin
issues #4-5 & issue #1 backup by Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic & Matthew Wilson
February to September 2020
The revived Wolverine solo title turns out to be a companion book to Benjamin Percy’s X-Force. The team show up in the first arc; the Russian super soldiers for issue #3 turn up again in X-Force; and when we get to “X of Swords”, we’ll see the Wolverine chapter running through both books as if they were indistinguishable.
If nothing else, it helps to keep things straight between Wolverine’s solo and team books. And certainly the tone is very similar, though this book does benefit from being able to keep its focus on a single character.
It also carries over some of X-Force‘s flaws. The first arc immediately rubs me up the wrong way by having Wolverine kill off the rest of X-Force. The Krakoan resurrection set-up can easily tempt writers into killing off characters, because it no longer has consequences. But we’re past the point of establishing the concept now, and instead it just feels like a repeat of What If? syndrome, where characters charge into situations they’d normally take in stride, and die en masse like poisoned lemmings. It’s quite literally overkill.
(more…)House to Astonish Episode 187
A compact and bijou hour-and-change of comics chat for you this time round, with discussion of Marie Javins’ promotion to DC EIC, John Nee being let go as Marvel Publisher, and the announcements of Truth & Justice, X-Men Legends, Hollow Heart and Geiger. We’ve also got reviews of Punchline and Hellboy and the BPRD: The Seven Wives Club, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe mentioned it once but it thinks it got away with it. All this plus Adam Smith’s Golden Age comics career, 1990s house anthems and Johnny Fishnchips, the scrappy British superhero.
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 remember, if you ever feel like your torso could be warmer, you can always buy one of our neato t-shirts over at our Redbubble page.
Review: Cable vol 4 #1-4
CABLE vol 4 #1-4
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
March to September 2020
It’s past time that I started clearing my review backlog. So let’s go through the ongoing titles and talk about what they were doing before “X of Swords” started.
Cable had the misfortune to launch just before the delays caused by the pandemic, leading to a delay of over four months between issues #1 and #2. That’s beyond the control of anyone involved, but it means stories played out much more slowly than originally intended. Still, the impact on Cable is rather less than on other titles, because it had barely got going in the first place – its first issue is mostly about establishing its take on the title character, and setting up the story to follow.
(more…)Charts – 13 November 2020
Ah, are we into the pre-Christmas lull already?
1. Ariana Grande – “Positions”
22. Ariana Grande – “POV”
For the second week running, Ariana Grande charts with the maximum three tracks from her new album. “Positions” spends its third week at number one – admittedly without much in the way of competition. “34+35” drops from 9 to 18. And we get one of those awkward quirks of the chart rules, as “POV” overtakes “Motive” as the third-placed track from the album, and elbows it off the chart entirely thanks to the quota rule. Since “POV” was disqualified under the same rule last week, technically it becomes this week’s highest new entry, but it’s all a little artificial.
(more…)