X-Men: Black – Magneto
X-Men: Black is… a series of random one-shots about villains, I guess? There’s a serialised back-up strip, “Degeneration”, but the lead stories seem to have no connection with it, or to one another. So I’ll take that at face value.
“The Stars, Our Destination?” is a Magneto story written by Chris Claremont and pencilled by Dalibor Talajić. And it’s always a slightly strange feeling when Chris Claremont makes one of his occasional reprise visits to the X-Men. He wrote the team for sixteen years; his take on the X-Men is the one that elevated them to A-list status. But you can’t really emulate the strengths of that run in a story like this, because so much of it was about building characters and storylines over time.
Charts – 12 October 2018
Well, this is a surprise.
1. Dave featuring Fredo – “Funky Friday”
Not so much because Calvin Harris and Sam Smith’s “Promises” gets knocked back to number 2 after a five-week run – that feels about right. But this was behind in the midweeks. It’s an independently released track. And while Dave – also sometimes known as Santan Dave – has had hit singles before, the biggest was “No Words”, which never got above number 17. On top of that, while Dave’s a pretty accessible rapper so far as things like delivery and subject matter go, this is still a minimal, mid-paced track without any conventional chorus. It’s good, but it’s not an obvious number one in any way. But here we are.
What If? – X-Men
Another year, another batch of What If? one-shots. So welcome to Completist Corner: It’s Technically An X-Book.
The original What If? series specialised in alternate endings to published stories, which usually turned out to be that a lot of people died and the world was changed forever or something. More recently, though, the What If? branding has been applied to some ground-up alternate-reality takes on main characters, which is what we have here. It’s a cyberspace X-Men, because somebody has spotted that X and *.exe are kind of a bit similar? If you squint? That somebody, presumably, is writer Bryan Edward Hill, who’s doing a Batman and the Outsiders series for DC.
Charts – 5 October 2018
There’s a podcast one post down! Go listen to that!
But if you’re here for the chart…
1. Calvin Harris & Sam Smith – “Promises”
Five weeks. Not much more to be said about that, so…
13. Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper – “Shallow”
Welcome to the post-imperial phase of Lady Gaga’s career. After a string of big hits between 2009 and 2011, her last two albums struggled to get traction beyond their lead singles. Diminishing returns have plainly set in, so a drastic change of tack is called for. And here it is: she’s turned to acting, in a country-rock musical. It’s a remake of A Star is Born, originally dating from 1937, but also done with Judy Garland and James Mason in the fifties, and Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in the seventies. Bradley Cooper, who also directs the film, is naturally making his first appearance on the singles chart. The reviews have been glowing.
House to Astonish Episode 167
It’s NYCC, and there’s a whole ton of news just waiting to be chewed over, so it would be rude of us not to do that, frankly. On the new House to Astonish, Paul and I remember Norm Breyfogle and Carlos Ezquerra, and talk about Die, Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, Wonder Comics, Humanoids’ new imprint H1, Avengers: No Road Home, Man Without Fear, Buffy, Three Jokers, The Girl In The Bay, Marvel’s 80th anniversary series, Oni Press’s webcomics portal, Champions, Savage Sword of Conan, Captain Marvel, Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man, Star Trek: Q Conflict, Flash: Year One, Pearl, Out Of The Blue, Guts, Share Your Smile and r(ender). We’ve also got reviews of These Savage Shores and Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is fast as lightning. All this plus My 1.5 Presidents, a pint of bees and Deadly Bannister of Kung Fu.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comics below, on Twitter, via email, or on our Facebook fan page. And remember, sandals and sunhats are sometimes foods, but a good t-shirt is forever, so why not check out our Redbubble store?
Domino Annual #1
Annuals are always off to the side somewhere, and if they’re not going to be important to the plot, they have to find some other way of standing out. The first Domino annual is certainly different: it’s a four-story anthology with four different writers (plus a framing sequence by Leah Williams and Michael Shelfer). So we’re getting a bunch of different perspectives on Domino, a character who’s been written in wildly divergent ways over the years. Does it add up to something coherent?
First up is “Dead Drunk in Dry Gulch”, by regular writer Gail Simone, with art by Victor Ibáñez and Jay David Ramos. This one ties in directly to the regular title, since it’s a flashback to Domino’s first encounter with Outlaw, forming the posse from the regular title. It’s a blatant retcon, equipping Domino with two best friends who she’s never previously been associated with, so a bit of back story probably helps lend it weight.
Charts – 28 September 2018
Now this is a busy week. So bear with me, I’ll be skipping quickly over some of these…
1. Calvin Harris & Sam Smith – “Promises”
Four weeks, though the margins still aren’t huge – it leads by the equivalent of 6,500 sales, and it’s the sales that tip it over the edge, since it’s only at number 3 on the streaming chart. A fourth week makes it Sam Smith’s longest running number one, beating last year’s “Too Good at Goodbyes”. The rest of the top 10 is largely static, with a touch of place-swapping.
10. Lil Peep & XXXTentacion – “Falling Down”
X-Men Blue #33-36: “Surviving the Experience”
If X-Men Gold had the problem of doing a final issue when nothing was really ending, X-Men Blue has a slightly different problem: the time-travelling teens’ tenure in 2018 is tantalisingly close to termination! They look set to return to the sixties! A simpler, more alliterative and exclamatory time! There’s a real ending here!
Or rather, there’s a real ending, but it’s over in Extermination, which isn’t even written by Cullen Bunn. Nor does it particularly lend itself to any kind of plot set-up. So instead X-Men Blue spends its last issues tying up some loose ends and character arcs, and trying to provide a sense of closure to the run.
Charts – 21 September 2018
It’s one of those weeks when we thank heavens for the albums chart, because there’s really nothing going on with the singles…
1. Calvin Harris & Sam Smith – “Promises”
That’s three weeks, clinging on by a very narrow margin (the equivalent of 6,000 sales over Benny Blanco at number 2). Sam Smith managed three weeks with “Too Good at Goodbyes” last year, so if he can manage another week, he’ll set a personal record.
33. Jason Derulo & David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj & Willy William – “Goodbye”
X-Men Gold #36: “Feared and Hated”
X-Men Gold, 2017-18. It happened.
Marc Guggenheim’s 36-issue X-Men run was a self-consciously retro affair. After years of the X-Men living on offshore islands or demon dimensions, or all the emphasis being on weird time-travelling splinter teams, here was a flagship X-Men title that was about the actual X-Men team, in the X-Men mansion, doing X-Men things. It had been a while, and at least part of the gameplan here was to restate the basics – something a book needs now and again, to remind us of the theme in between the variations.
