House to Astonish Episode 88
It’s our last podcast before Paul gets wed and heads off on his honeymoon, so we’ve made it an extra-long one, with nearly 90 minutes of discussion on news out of San Diego, including Marvel’s current teaser images, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man movies, the new Sandman mini, Minimum Carnage, Red She-Hulk, all the titles announced at the Image panel and Daniel Way leaving Deadpool. We’ve also got a run through the October solicitations, there are reviews of Captain Marvel, Bandette and Punk Rock Jesus and the esrevinU levraM eht fo koobdnaH laiciffO eht fo koobdnaH laiciffO gets confusing. All this plus the invention of time, Marvel WHEN? and the latest in our series of regionally accented comic book creator impressions.
The podcast is here, or on Mixcloud here, available via iTunes or through Stitcher.com‘s site or free iOS or Android apps. It’s also accessible via the player below.
Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
The X-Axis – 15 July 2012
Yes, it’s a day late. Mind you, if I’m being perfectly honest, it’s not the most exciting week of stories anyway…
AvX: Versus #4 – You can just about see why somebody might have thought an “all fight scene” spin-off book would be a good idea. In theory, if you’re creative enough, it gives artists an opportunity to go nuts and have fun for a few pages. Frankly, very few of the stories in this book – if “story” is even the right word – have come close to delivering on that. This issue has one of the better attempts, with Kaare Andrews showing up for ten pages of Thor versus a Phoenix-powered Emma Frost. (She wins, as if you need told.) It’s pretty much content-free, but it’s nicely over the top, and hell, it’s Kaare Andrews, who could probably make ten visually interesting pages out of paint drying.
The lead story is another matter. It’s Rick Remender and Brandon Peterson doing Daredevil versus Psylocke. And what you get there is an adequate trudge through the remit. Remender is clearly hunting for ways to make this interesting, but struggling to find many. He tries to play up the idea that both characters have a connection with the Hand, but he can’t really do anything much with it. There’s a theoretically nice idea about Psylocke using flocks of birds to obscure Daredevil’s radar sense, but visually, these things are being done much better in Daredevil’s own book, which actually has a plot. And of course the pay-off is the umpteenth “one of the X-Men realises that gee, maybe they’re the bad guys in this” – which just flags up the problem that the crossover as a whole has never given them any adequate reason for failing to spot the point anyway.
Housekeeping
Reviews won’t be till Monday, due to my perverse insistence on reading the books first, something which I have not yet done.
Money in the Bank 2012
Once again, the WWE has chosen to make this easy for me by only announcing five matches – one of which is going to be the pre-show match, streaming on YouTube. So in practice, that’s only four matches announced for a three-hour show.
Now, granted, in practice, all four matches can be expected to be lengthy – but that’s still about an hour of mystery content for the PPV buyer. There’s a school of thought that says this doesn’t matter. In one sense that’s correct. Nobody (or nobody who understands how these shows work, at any rate) ever bought a three-hour show because of the sixth match on the card, which was unlikely to run more than ten minutes.
But I still think it’s a mistake, for two reasons.
Charts – 8 July 2012
Don’t get too comfortable, this won’t take long. The week ending 8 July 2012 was utterly dead for new releases, resulting in a chart with only two new entries, both miles down the chart, and with only one major climber (“Pound the Alarm” by Nicki Minaj, jumping 34-16).
1. Maroon 5 (feat Wiz Khalifa) – “Payphone”
Haven’t we been here before? “Payphone” was number 1 two weeks ago, it got knocked off by will.i.am’s “This Is Love” (which drops to 3 this week), and now it’s back. It’s probably not going to manage a third week, though you never know. Judging from the video, the quality of aim among American gun-users has improved little since the days of the A-Team. Also, it’s remarkably easy to just run out of a bank besieged by the cops.
Housekeeping
Just for anyone who’s wondering:-
The next podcast will be next weekend. (If we did it today, there’d be an enormous gap before the next one. Trust me, it’s neater this way.)
Chart post and wrestling preview to follow later this weekend, and (probably) reviews on Sunday night – depending mainly on whether I manage to find the time to actually read the comics before then.
The X-Axis – 8 July 2012
Two crossover issues this week, plus the comic you’ve all been waiting for – Jeph Loeb returns to Wolverine! May God have mercy on our souls.
Age of Apocalypse #5 – First up, though, Age of Apocalypse shifts gear by giving us what looks to be a single-issue story. The focus here is on the AoA version of Quentin Quire, who turns out to be a wildcard in that universe. He’s still a powerful telepath, but without anyone to teach him, it’s driven him a bit mad. The result is a character who mainly talks gibberish but, in an echo of the original’s iconoclastic pretensions, is steadily building a street-level following of other psychics who fall under his influence.
Charts – catch-up
I’m two weeks behind on this, so let’s race through the current week’s charts (albeit late) before it turns into three when tomorrow’s chart comes out. Fortunately, they’ve been pretty quiet weeks.
The previous week’s number 1 was (as expected) “Payphone” by Maroon 5 featuring Wiz Khalifa, evidently not suffering too badly from the sales of spoiler cover versions. Perhaps it even benefitted. I still think it’s a pretty uninspiring song, though Samuel Bayer’s video cheerfully ignores it entirely in favour of blowing things up.
House to Astonish Episode 87
We did promise that we’d be back midweek, and we are (just). We’re talking – a lot – about Marvel NOW and Marvel’s publishing plans in general, Monkeybrain Comics, the Amazing Spider-Man opening day box office, Marvel’s future movie plans and the Harvey Award nominations. We’ve also got reviews of Infernal Man-Thing, Atomic Robo: Flying She-Devils of the Pacific and The Hypernaturals, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe can keep its hat on (except it can’t seem to keep its hat on). All this plus a taste-test of Hershey’s chocolate, pants with Spider-Man on them and the Legion of Super-Heroes with a moustache.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via Stitcher.com (or their free iOS or Android apps). You could also just use the player below, of course, or get hold of it via iTunes.
Let us know what you think, either in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
The X-Axis – 1 July 2012
The stop-start world of Marvel scheduling gives us a nice quiet week this time. Three X-Men titles, and two of those are part of the big event…
Wolverine and the X-Men #12 – This is one of those books that you can feel struggling to assert its identity in the face of a crossover. The plot is basically written in the margins of Avengers vs X-Men – the X-Men are hunting down the Avengers and this book is doing it from the perspective of Rachel Grey.
Jason Aaron clearly understands that if you’re going to do a Phoenix crossover in a book where the main cast includes Rachel Grey, at some point you’re going to have to address the fact that she’s a former host. That’s presumably why we’re getting a whole issue about her. Unfortunately, the moment you acknowledge Rachel as a former host, you blast the plot of the wider crossover to smithereens, since it begs the question of why everyone outside the X-Men is ignoring the fact that the Phoenix has been here before and caused no real trouble at all.
