Charts – 13 December 2019
You know where this is heading.
1. Tones & I – “Dance Monkey”
Eleven weeks. Can it hold on for the Christmas number one? Almost certainly not, because it peaked several weeks ago, and so the downweighting rule ought to kick in next week. Barring a miracle, “Dance Monkey” will land at joint seventh on the all time record list, alongside “Despacito” and Slim Whitman’s 1955 hit “Rose Marie”.
“Own It” by Stormzy featuring Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy climbs to 2 after a fortnight at number 3. “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey advances 8-6. “Last Christmas” by Wham moves 13-7. “River” by Ellie Goulding climbs 14-8 – it may be a Christmas single but it’s also her highest position since “On My Mind” reached number 5 in 2015.
11. Harry Styles – “Adore You”
(more…)Fallen Angels #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers are from the digital edition. This isn’t a continuity-heavy issue, and a lot of it is taken up with a fight scene… so this is probably the shortest annotations post yet.
COVER / PAGE 1. Psylocke/Kwannon, sheathing a bloody sword, surrounded by blossom, and with another woman apparently training behind her.
PAGES 2-3. Apoth’s internal monologue.
Apoth – which gets the computer font lettering – gives us a weird speech where the main points are (a) he is God; (b) God transcends morality, and birth and death are neither good nor bad but just part of the scheme of things; (c) he is lonely; and (d) Psylocke is his “mother” who created him. He apparently wants to draw in Psylocke so they can be together.
The stuff about birth and death lacking moral content echoes Kwannon’s training material from earlier issues. More generally, Apoth seems to be saying that people turned him into a God, in order that he in turn could elevate them. (There’s a man-machine version of the Sistine Chapel fingers to emphasise the point.) Again, this is squarely in the Hickman era’s theme of technological progress versus evolution.
(more…)X-Force #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Marvel Girl wearing the Cerebro helmet.
PAGES 2-3. Flashback to the bad guys removing skin from Domino to graft onto their lab-grown Reavers.
This is an intentionally horrific sequence accompanied by the lead bad guy – still unnamed – explaining that humans succeed by recognising their limitations and designing tools to transcend them. It’s all part of the general Hickman-era theme of mutants versus post-humanity (natural evolution versus technological progress). As we’ll see later, the damage which Domino takes in this story also seems to play into a revamp (probably short-term) of the character.
PAGES 4-5. Recap page and credits. This is “The Skeleton Key” by Benjamin Percy and Joshua Cassara. The title refers back to the lead bad guy’s line in the previous scene that Domino is a “walking skeleton key that will help us pick the lock of evolution”. That seems to point to something a bit more ambitious than merely sneaking past Krakoa’s defences – perhaps something akin to Grant Morrison’s U-Men, who tried to upgrade themselves using stolen mutant body parts.
(more…)New Mutants #3 annotations
As always, page numbers go by the digital edition, and this post contains spoilers.
PAGE 1 / COVER: Armor, Glob Herman, Maxine and Manon arrive at Beak and Angel’s door.
PAGES 2-3. Armor is troubled by the mutants who aren’t on Krakoa.
After two issues of the New Mutants in space, this issue returns to Krakoa for a story about some of the mutants for later generations of trainees – and by a different creative team, at that. No doubt it’ll all come together down the line…
Armor. Hisako Ichiki was introduced in Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run in 2004. She’s another character who made it to main-team level for a while before drifting back into comparative obscurity – though she was used quite prominently in the Age of X-Man: NextGen miniseries, alongside her co-star Glob Herman.
(more…)Charts – 6 December 2019
PREVIOUSLY ON THE UK SINGLES CHART: Annoyed by the way the chart is overrun with Christmas back catalogue material in December, the music industry changed the chart rules, so that anything which has been out for more than a couple of years is permanently subject to the “accelerated chart ratio” – the lower points given for streams of records that are meant to be on their way out of the charts. That will do it, they thought.
That will do it.
1. Tones & I – “Dance Monkey”
That’s ten weeks, and at this point it’s time to dust off the record books. Ten weeks at number one puts “Dance Monkey” joint ninth in the all time record, alongside “Umbrella” by Rihanna (2007), “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston (1992), and “Cara Mia” by David Whitfield (1954).
The rest of the top 4 is also static. “Roxanne” by Arizona Zervas climbs 7-5, and “Memories” by Maroon 5 from 8-7. Number 8 is… ah. This is the chart covering sales and streams from 29 November to 5 December, so naturally, it’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey, which entered at number 34 last week as a festive beachhead.
10. The Weeknd – “Heartless”
12. The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights”
The Homies 2019
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 2019 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 Agents of Atlas or Criminal wouldn’t be eligible, but (for example) Coffin Bound or Excellence would.
BEST CONTINUING SERIES
The counterpart to the categories above, which covers books whose first issue was published in 2018 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 2019 (or partially in 2019, 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?
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!
Excalibur #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Apocalypse takes Rictor under his wing.
PAGES 2-3. Recap page and credits. This is “Verse III: Three Covenants”, written by Tini Howard, with art by Marcus To, colours by Erick Arciniega, and letters by Cory Petit.
PAGES 4-6. Rictor is stuck indoors, unable to leave the house without starting earthquakes.
Rictor. Rictor was first introduced as one of X-Factor’s students in X-Factor #17 (1987), and went on to have stints in the New Mutants, X-Force, and X-Factor Investigations. He and Shatterstar were a couple for a long time. When we last saw him, in the recent Shatterstar mini, he was running a bar in New York, and he and Shatterstar were still on decent enough terms. The idea that his powers are out of control is new, and since he evidently has access to the internet, it’s unclear why he doesn’t simply contact the X-Men for help. But it’s evidently a plot point, since somebody keeps making psychic contact with him, asking him to “come home.” There’s a suggestion later that he’s worried about damaging Krakoa itself, which is understandable, but there’s clearly more to his power loss than that.
(more…)Marauders #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Professor X, Iceman, Storm and Bishop stand ready to fight an unrecognisable, just-resurrected mutant as he emerges from his egg. But isn’t Professor X dead? Don’t get too excited – it doesn’t happen like this in the issue, plus it’s a flashback.
PAGES 1-3. Sebastian Shaw leaves his home on Krakoa, to attend the resurrection of his son.
This is a flashback to “several weeks ago”, though it’s rather confusingly done, since the captions read at first like Shaw’s internal monologue as he walks through the streets – actually, he’s narrating it from the present day.
(more…)X-Men #3 annotations
As always, page numbers are from the digital edition, and this post contains spoilers.
COVER / PAGE 1. Cyclops and Emma Frost riding what are presumably meant to be dinosaurs. Other than the fact that the story visits the Savage Land, this doesn’t have much to do with the content.
PAGES 2-3. Mysterious bad guys come through the gate to the Savage Land flower farms.
The Savage Land. The Marvel Universe’s hidden jungle where dinosaurs still exist (not that we see any in this story). We established back in House of X #1 that the X-Men had set up a location in the Savage Land, and evidently it’s where they’re growing all the farms for those pharmaceuticals they’re making. From the X-Men’s point of view, it’s presumably place where they can grow the all-important flowers and be relatively confident of being undisturbed. The “harvest centre” has mutants picking the flowers by hand – the first time we’ve seen Krakoans actually working, I think.
(more…)Charts – 29 November 2019
Christmas beckons.
1. Tones & I – “Dance Monkey”
Nine weeks. That means it’s passed Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber’s “I Don’t Care” to be the longest running number 1 of 2019 – it can’t be beaten now, obviously – and it’s the longest running number 1 since “God’s Plan” by Drake also managed nine weeks at the start of last year. Number 2 is “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi, climbing 17 places now that it has a full week on release.
3. Stormzy featuring Ed Sheeran & Burna Boy – “Own It”
(more…)