Extermination
The thinking behind Extermination might be called haphazard. This is the story where the time-travelling original X-Men finally get removed from the board – they’re sent back to the Silver Age and the reset button is duly pressed, save that their adult counterparts now remember everything that happened while they were in the present. The practical significance of this is surely limited, given that their adult counterparts already know the general thrust of what they’ve been up to – it feels like more of a gesture of goodwill that, honestly, this all amounted to something.
But the obvious question is: why is this appearing as a separate miniseries written by Ed Brisson, rather than the final arc of Cullen Bunn’s X-Men Blue? Isn’t that the natural place to do this story?
Charts – 21 December 2018
It’s the Christmas number one! And… this was not expected.
1. LadBaby – “We Built This City”
So, after two years of regular singles as the Christmas number one – Ed Sheeran last year, Clean Bandit in 2016 – it’s a novelty record. We’ve had a lot of charity records and X Factor winners as Christmas number one, but the last time an out-and-out novelty record did it was in 2000 when the theme to Bob the Builder managed it.
X-Men Red: The Hate Machine
Hark, listen closely. Do you hear it? There – ever so faint. It’s the plaintive quack of a lame duck.
X-Men Red has spent nearly a year on its opening storyline with Cassandra Nova, about half of that time on an extended gathering-of-the-team sequence. And by the time the damn thing has even finished, we were already several issues deep into the next relaunch. Astonishing X-Men had this problem too – and suffered for it – but at least it also had a relatively self-contained redemption arc for Havok. X-Men Red finds it more of a challenge, because it spends so very long on its team-building, and the whole thing reads like a statement of intent designed to set the direction for a new team.
The Homies 2018
There’s gifts on the fire and logs on the tree, and that means only one thing – it’s time for the annual House to Astonish Homies awards, where we dish out our gongs in various categories to the best and brightest comics of the year.
As always, Paul and I will individually be choosing a winner for each category, but there’s the usual proviso – we want YOU to help, so you all name your picks in the comments, and Paul and I each choose our own, and we talk a bit about each of the three on our awards show.
We’re likely to be recording at the very end of December/start of Jan, so we’re giving you until midnight UK time (7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific) on December 29 to make your choice. When you list your picks, don’t just name names either, because we’ll be reading out the best comments on the show, so let us know your thinking!
BEST NEW SERIES
This one’s pretty self-explanatory – any comic whose first issue was published between 1 January 2018 and the close of nominations (29 December) is eligible. What new series got your attention the most this year?
BEST ACTUALLY NEW SERIES
This one’s a little less self-explanatory – what series, again first published between 1 January and 29 December, did you think was best, with the proviso that it has to be something where the property wasn’t in existence prior to the start of 2018. We’re counting re-use of titles as well as concepts, so West Coast Avengers or Martian Manhunter wouldn’t be eligible, but (for example) Fearscape or Die would.
BEST CONTINUING SERIES
The counterpart to the categories above, which covers books whose first issue was published in 2017 or before. They’ve been around the block, but they’ve still got what it takes.
BEST MINI, ONE-SHOT OR OGN
These are explaining themselves by this point, right? We’re looking for OGNs, one-shots and minis published in 2018 (or partially in 2018, in the case of minis).
FAVOURITE WRITER
FAVOURITE ARTIST
FAVOURITE COLOURIST
Each of these three is pretty self-explanatory – whose name on the cover or credits box of a book makes you want to pick it up? Whose work do you most look forward to seeing?
MOST WANTED
This is for the comic, series or graphic novel that saw print this year which you’d want to see more of, whether that be a book that was cancelled before its time, a one-shot or mini that just begs for a follow-up, or an OGN that you’d love to see a sequel to.
MOST PLEASANT SURPRISE
It may have seemed unappealing when you read about it online, and those preview pages may have looked unremarkable, but when you finally got the winner of this category in your hands you were ready to eat your words. What comic, series or graphic novel did you find yourself enjoying much more than you thought you would?
STIFF DRINK AWARD
This award will go to the comic or graphic novel that most made us gasp with surprise – an unexpected plot twist, a daring cliffhanger or a shocking denouement will stand a book in good stead here.
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT
This is exactly what it says – which creator, creative team, publisher or other contributor to the world of comics really knocked it out of the park this year?
Let us have your picks in the comments thread below, along with your thinking on each one – we’ll read out a range of the responses on our big end-of-year show. Happy nominating!
Charts – 14 December 2018
Fans of essentially nothing happening won’t want to miss this week’s magnificently uneventful charts! The thing is, if you’re planning a steady climb to the top in time for Christmas, well, you started a couple of weeks back at the latest. And if you’re hoping for a smash-and-grab Christmas-chart one-off sale, that’s next week. Which means this week’s new releases are, um, few in number.
1. Ariana Grande – “Thank U, Next”
Six weeks – it needs a seventh to be Christmas number one. In the current market, that’s by no means impossible. After all, the 2016 Christmas number one was Clean Bandit’s “Rockabye”, which had been at number 1 since mid-November and remained there into the new year. But the lead over the number two single – Ava Max’s “Sweet But Psycho” – is equivalent to only 9,000 sales, so by sheer coincidence there’s something of a battle on for next week. Oh, and “Santa Tell Me” climbs from 35-30 this week.
X-Men: The Exterminated
X-Men: The Exterminated is an epilogue to Extermination, which you may have noticed isn’t finished yet. It’s been a while since we’ve had a book spiral off the schedules like this. How I’ve missed it.
So, spoilers – well, kind of. This issue contains two stories saying farewell to Cable, who died at the beginning of Extermination, in an issue that came out a while back. The spoiler, then, is that he’s still dead at the end. But that is a spoiler, though, isn’t it? Because people who die in the first act of a story tend not to stay dead. Plus… well, it’s Extermination. It’s a series that presumably exists to get rid of the time travelling X-Men who are nowhere to be seen in Uncanny X-Men, but the heavy lifting on that score was already done in X-Men Blue. And so Extermination has a distinct vibe of not mattering in the slightest. All of which means I was honestly a little surprised to learn that Cable was actually meant to be properly dead.
Charts – 7 December 2018
So much for the theory that if we give less weight to the streams of older tracks, the chart won’t be clogged up with old records this Christmas, then!
1. Ariana Grande – “Thank U, Next”
Five weeks, and the chart compilers are crediting it with a new record for weekly streams – 14.9 million. This is misleading: the previous record was 14.2 million, held by Ed Sheeran, but that was before video plays counted towards the chart. And since Ariana Grande’s video streams stand at over 7 million in a week, it’s pretty clear that if we were comparing like with like, Ed Sheeran would still be ahead. But more of Ariana Grande later. Meanwhile…
4. Dalton Harris featuring James Arthur – “The Power of Love”
Merry X-Men Holiday Special
You don’t get much further into completist-only territory than an X-Men Christmas special. Sometimes that can lead to issues with a distinct “that’ll do” feel to them. Not so here – whatever else you might say about the Merry X-Men Holiday Special, it’s certainly trying something different, with contributors ranging from the usual suspects to the unexpected.
It’s part jam issue, part advent calendar, with each day featuring a single page by a different creative team. Jam issues are often a frustrating mess, but this one avoids that problem by not even pretending to have a single story continuing between the pages. For the most part, it’s just a range of creative teams, asked to pick an X-Man and do a one-page, December-themed vignette.
Charts – 30 November 2018
No X-books to review this week, and… yeah, not the most active chart either. Just three new entries on the singles chart.
1. Ariana Grande – “Thank U, Next”
Four weeks! And look, it has a video now. As in, literally within the last couple of hours. It’s… well, it’s a homage to teen films, which doesn’t really feel like it fits with the song, but whatever.
20. DigDat – “Air Force”
Charts – 23 November 2018
People still really like The Greatest Showman.
1. Ariana Grande – “Thank U, Next”
But first, Ariana Grande gets a third week at number one. It has a comfortable 24,000 sales-equivalent lead over the number two single. Not much more to say about that, really, so…
16. James Arthur & Anne-Marie – “Rewrite The Stars”
