House to Astonish Episode 198
We’re back, with more news and reviews and the usual nonsense. We’ve got chat about Archie Comics’ NFT shenanigans, IDW’s Originals line, DC’s Pride special’s lineup, the new Batman and Detective Comics creative teams, Superman: The Space Age, X-Terminators, All-Out Avengers, the relaunch of Shang-Chi and Grant Morrison’s debut novel Luda. We’ve also got reviews of The Wrong Earth: Fame and Fortune and Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe doesn’t have a leg to stand on. All this plus a fictional Scottish king, an unexplained vendetta against Sussex and Fleem Blomfom, the character find of 2022.
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Charts – 15 April 2022
We’ve had some dull singles charts lately, but gosh, this is a really boring one.
Second week – which is more than he managed with his only other solo number one, “Sign of the Times”, back in 2017. It was closer than expected; at the start of the week his lead over the single below was equivalent to a few hundred sales, but it wound up being in the thousands.
2. Jack Harlow – “First Class”
This is… a surprise, to be honest. Jack Harlow has had two previous top 40 hits in the UK – “Whats Poppin”, which reached number 25 in 2020, and his guest shot on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby”, which got to number 3 last year. His previous single “Nail Tech” missed the top 40, so he’s certainly not here on the strength of fanbase. I wouldn’t have thought this was an obvious candidate for a breakthrough hit – the chorus is lifted from “Glamorous” by Fergie, which is one of her better singles, but hardly a lost classic. (It reached number 6 in 2007.) Harlow’s version is better, mind you.
X-Men #10 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #10
“Sisterhood of the Metal Bones”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Javier Pina
Colourist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Jordan White
COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine (Laura) faces off against someone clawed. Anyone who’s been reading the X-books for a while will recognise her as Lady Deathstrike without too much trouble.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Wolverine is resurrected.
This page is plugging what seems likely to be a continuity error in issue #5, where Laura was shown as having a complete metal skeleton (as opposed to just metal claws). In issue #8, she said that this changed “after returning from the Vault”, so this is apparently an expanded version of the resurrection that we saw at the end of X-Men vol 5 #19. If so, Synch and Cyclops should both be here too, but let’s assume they’re out of shot.
The dialogue seems to confirm that Proteus is the member of the Five responsible for resurrecting people complete with their biological implants – which makes sense, since he’s the only one of the group who could logically do that.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #26
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #26
Writer: Declan Shalvey
Artist: Nick Roche
Colourist: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Lauren Amaro
It’s a Banshee story for St Patrick’s Day! Marvel have done quite a few holiday tie-ins with the Infinity Comics, and I wonder if this started out as one of those.
We’ve not just got an actual Irish character here, we’ve got an actual Irish creative team. Declan Shalvey’s already done two arcs on this book; Nick Roche is probably best known for his work on IDW’s Transformers books, but he’s a really good artist who brings a nicely sturdy, cartoony quality to Banshee.
The New York St Patrick’s Day celebrations inspire Banshee to actually return home to Cassidy Keep, that wonderful bastion of Oirishness where actual leprechauns live. He finds Black Tom there, and the usual fight breaks out, with Sean accusing Tom of always trying to take things from him. Of course, that’s ultimately about Tom raising Sean’s daughter Theresa.
Charts – 8 April 2022
It’s another week with very few new entries, but at least this time it’s because nobody wants to go up against…
1. Harry Styles – “As It Was”
I see you’re the Weeknd now, Harry. Fair enough. This is the lead single from his third album, and his second solo number one. The first was his solo debut “Sign of the Times”, which was number one in its first week of release in 2017 – it dropped to 4 the following week, but to be fair, it hung around the top 10 for seven weeks total.
X-Force Annual #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE ANNUAL vol 3 #1
“Lab Work”
Writer: Nadia Shammas
Artist: Rafael Pimentel
Colourist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
X-FORCE ANNUAL. This is the third X-Force Annual #1. The others were in 1992 and 2010. There was also an unnumbered annual in 1999.
This issue seems to take place between X-Force #26-27.
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine, Domino and Kid Omega versus Orchis’s Sentinels.
PAGE 2. Sage has doubts about the Beast, and calls Emma Frost.
As we’ll find out later, the Beast has sent the X-Force field team (Wolverine, Domino and Kid Omega) on a mission to retrieve a shipment stolen by Orchis from Hellfire Trading. For reasons which will become apparent as the story goes on, Sage is rightly sceptical about this whole thing, and suspects a trap, but the Beast is insistent. This story doubtless contributes to the breakdown in Sage and Beast’s relationship seen in X-Force #27.
Erta Ale is a volcano in Ethiopia. It’s a rare example of a volcano which actually has a lake of lava; not only that, it’s had one since 1906.
X-Force #27 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #26
“From Cradle to Grave”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colourist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: X-Force battle the possessed Forge.
PAGES 2-3. Wolverine reflects on recent events.
As the footnote says, Wolverine is referring to the X Lives of Wolverine miniseries, in which Professor X and Jean Grey used Cerebro to transport Wolverine’s consciousness back in time so that he could battle Omega Red at various points in history, and prevent him from altering history by either murdering Professor X or preventing him from being born.
Wolverine claims that “I risked everything for Krakoa. Not just my life, but the timeline.” That’s a bit of a stretch, since Wolverine’s life is at risk in almost every story (to the extent that he’s killable at all), and the whole plot was that if he didn’t go back, the timeline was going to be irreparably altered anyway. Perhaps what he means is that the events of X Lives risked his life in the sense of destabilising his own history, but if so, that’s not something that really came across on the page as being at stake.
Marauders #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS vol 2 #1
“Extinction Agenda”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: The new Marauders team pose dramatically. For anyone just joining us, this team was assembled in Marauders Annual #1, which is effectively the real first issue of Steve Orlando’s run.
PAGES 2-4. The new Marauders rescue Fever Pitch.
“Gyrich’s little gift”. Henry Peter Gyrich was a senior figure in the anti-mutant organisation Orchis, until Abigail Brand killed him and replaced him in S.W.O.R.D. vol 2 #11.
X-Men Red #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #1
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Jordan D White
X-MEN RED. This is the successor title to S.W.O.R.D., also written by Al Ewing. It’s the second series to go by this name; the first was the series written by Tom Taylor which ran from 2018-19. In that context, the colour was simply indicating another X-Men team to go with Blue and Gold. Here, it refers to the planet Mars, where the series is set.
If you want to be really nitpicky, this is actually X-Men Red vol 1, because the Tom Taylor series was officially called X-Men: Red, but that’s too much even for me.
COVER / PAGE 1. Magneto, Storm and Sunspot on Mars, with the face of Abigail Brand visible behind them.
PAGES 2-5. Flashback: Storm defeats “Nameless” to become ruler of Arakko.
This is an expanded version of a scene previously shown in flashback in S.W.O.R.D. vol 2 #8. All we saw in that issue was the first two panels, though the surrounding dialogue made clear that Storm had issued a challenge to her predecessor as regent and defeated her in combat. That issue also established the basic idea that anyone on Arakko can challenge for a seat on the Great Ring (the ruling council) and win it by defeating the incumbent in combat.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #22-25
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #22-25
Writer & artist: Declan Shalvey
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Jordan D White
If you’re not reading this book, you may wonder why we’ve skipped issue #21. Well, it’s the first part of a storyline which is being serialised between the other story arcs, for reasons that aren’t exactly obvious. So we’ll come back to it when it’s finished.
In the meantime, this is the sequel to the first Unlimited arc, where AIM kidnapped three mutants and got away with one of them. Jonathan Hickman is no longer around, but Declan Shalvey, who drew that arc, returns as writer/artist to tie up the plot.
The unlikely team of Wolverine, Warlock and Strong Guy finally track the remaining stasis tube to an AIM base in New Zealand. You could be forgiven for thinking this is a case of an artist picking two characters he thought would be fun to draw, but heck, why not? They’re both gloriously ridiculous Bill Sienkiewicz designs, and it’s always fun to see someone take a crack at Warlock who’s willing to lean into the idea.
