House to Astonish Episode 204
What’s that coming over the hill, is it a podcast, is it a podcast? Yes, it is, and it’s also a music reference to a song that came out in 2006, so that’s some added value for you there at no additional cost. This time round, Paul and I are wishing Jeff Smith well in his recovery from cardiac arrest, and have chat for you about Tom Brevoot’s intra-Marvel move, the upcoming Sentry, Speed Force and Spider-Man: Reign 2 series, and the strange case of the possibly disappearing IDW Originals line. We’ve also got reviews of Uncanny Avengers and The Cull, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a motley selection. All this plus the length of a day on Mars, a bit of unexpected format-breaking and a dog with its head stuck in a basketball.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter (we are still calling it Twitter), Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page, and look, if you’ve been holding off getting a House to Astonish t-shirt, you might want to do it now, not saying they’re going to be taken off Redbubble soon or anything, but you never know (they are not going to be taken off Redbubble soon but you should definitely get one anyway).
The X-Axis – w/c 14 August 2023
This is the most absurdly busy week we’ve had in ages. And alarmingly, this isn’t due to slippage – this is how it was solicited. That’s not a good thing, and hopefully it won’t be repeated any time soon.
Anyway, I’ve done annotations for four of these books already, so we’ll run through things quickly.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #100. By Steve Foxe, Stephanie Williams, Noemi Vettori, Pete Pantazis & Travis Lanham. There’s also a thing called X-Men: Hellfire Gala Last Rites Infinity Comic #1 added to X-Men Unlimited this week, but that’s just an Infinite Comics edition of the trailer strips with X-Men election candidates, so we’ll pass that by. This is an anniversary issue, and rather than launch a major storyline, it’s more of a farewell to the Krakoan era. Prodigy learns that resurrected mutants need more than just the bare facts of what’s happened in their absence, and so starts collating some more emotional memories that can help people to understand better. It’s a perfectly solid idea, decently executed in a montage sequence, and a nice alternative to the more obvious way of doing an anniversary issue.
X-MEN: RED #14. (Annotations here.) We skip forward a few months to join the Arakki civil war in mid flow. And for the most part this is scene-setting for what that looks like. It’s the points of detail that elevate it above that, and Sunspot’s recap of Hellfire Gala works as an emotional sequence even if you’ve already read the original. I’m still not especially interested in Genesis, but I’m not entirely sure the story is either – she’s very much an off panel figurehead for the enemy forces, and a foil for the people we are interested in. X-Men: Red is somewhat detached from the rest of “Fall of X”, but since that means it’s continuing to pursue its own story, that’s not a bad thing.
Alpha Flight #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
ALPHA FLIGHT vol 5 #1
Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Scott Godliewski
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
ALPHA FLIGHT. Canada’s government-sponsored superhero team – an X-Men spin-off in the sense that they debuted in X-Men but not normally viewed as X-characters. I wouldn’t normally do Alpha Flight, and I might not do the whole of this run, but it is coming from the X-office, and it is a “Fall of X” tie-in, so let’s at least do the first issue.
COVER / PAGE 1. The official Alpha Flight team in the foreground, with the rest of the cast looming in the background, foreshadowing the twist. The logo is the one used on Alpha Flight vol 1 #1-17, though with the addition of a distressed background to fit the Fall of X theming.
Uncanny Avengers #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY AVENGERS vol 4 #1
“Truth & Justice”
Writer (main story): Gerry Duggan
Writer (G.O.D.S. page): Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Javier Garrón
Colour artist: Morry Hollowell
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Tom Brevoort
UNCANNY AVENGERS. I don’t normally do Avengers books – and this is edited by the Avengers office – but it’s a five-issue Fall of X tie-in complete with the X-books design and written by Gerry Duggan. Despite the title, it’s really a second X-Men book with Captain America guest starring.
This is the fourth run of Uncanny Avengers. The other three involved mash-up Avengers and X-Men team (the “Avengers Unity Squad”) designed to promote human-mutant relations. Duggan wrote volume 3 for 23 issues, and Captain America, Deadpool and Rogue were all featured prominently in that run.
COVER / PAGE 1. Pin-up of the team.
PAGES 2-3. Tribute to John Romita.
PAGES 4-6. Flashback: Dr Stasis and M.O.D.O.K. revive a mystery man.
This scene seems to be a parody of Captain America emerging from stasis and being told about how much things have changed, except this guy is being informed that it’s a dystopian future that needs to be reversed. The obvious implication is that the man being revived here is the new Captain Krakoa who debuted in Free Comic Book Day 2023: Avengers / X-Men. and who appears later in this issue.
Dark X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DARK X-MEN vol 2 #1
“There is a Kingdom” / “Do You Love Me”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist (“There is a Kingdom”): Jonas Scharf
Artist (“Do You Love Me”): Nelson Dániel
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
DARK X-MEN. This is the second Dark X-Men miniseries, but it has no connection to the first, which was a Dark Reign tie-in about Norman Osborn’s rival X-Men team.
COVER / PAGE 1. The cast pose. We’ll get to who all these people are shortly.
PAGE 2. Madelyne Pryor dreams.
Madelyne became the ruler of Limbo in New Mutants #25-28.
The Grim Reaper figure in her dream is holding the headdress from Havok’s costume.
PAGES 3-4. Alex Summers and Madelyne Pryor wake up.
The Limbo Embassy. This improbable location was debuted in the epilogue to Dark Web: Finale #1, after Madelyne Pryor regained control of Limbo and put a stop to its attacks on New York (even though she’d been complicit in them to start with). According to that issue, Krakoa helped talk the USA into accepting the embassy, but Madelyne more or less threatened to keep causing trouble unless the Limbo Embassy was tolerated in New York.
X-Men Red #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #14
“To War We March”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Yildiray Cinar
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm and her allies pose for action, with the giant statues of Apocalypse and Genesis from the Valley of the Fallen in the background. The stone texture is there, but the slight colouring and the positioning makes them look more like figures of the characters themselves.
PAGE 2. Tribute to John Romita.
PAGE 3. Genesis wakes Arakko.
The narrator. The start of page 19 has the narration continuing directly from the extract from The New History of Arakko on the previous page. So apparently all of the narration is from that source, and it’s the voice of Xilo.
“Genesis reaches out with her mind, with her mutant weapon…” Genesis’s powers have never been very clearly defined. But in Hickman’s X-Men #13 (2020), she’s shown using her powers to conjure up plants that ensnare enemy monsters, so presumably the idea is not that Genesis has telepathic powers, but rather that she has plant control abilities. There may be a suggestion here that her powers brought Okkara – the island that later split into Arrako and Krakoa – to life in the first place. Note that Xilo calls her “the mother of Arakko”.
Arakko has been dormant since the attack by Uranos during A.X.E.: Judgment Day.
Charts – 11 August 2023
For the first time in a while, this is a dead week for the singles chart.
1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”
That’s 10 weeks, tying with Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” as the longest running number one of the year. In theory, the next target is Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits”, which had 11 weeks in 2021. But “Sprinter” is due to be hit by the downweighting rule next week, so in practical terms it has no prospect of getting there. The top three is all non-movers – in fact, there are six non-movers in the top 10 – so Billie Eilish has a reasonable shot of taking the number 1 by default next week.
20. Doja Cat – “Paint the Town Red”
Doja Cat’s previous single “Attention” stalled at number 37, but probably achieved its actual goal of signalling that she’s tacking away from pop. That means we can follow it up with a track with a nice familiar sample – “Walk On By”, which reached number 9 for Dionne Warwick in 1964. Warwick’s biggest UK hit was actually “Heartbreaker”, which got to number 2 in 1982. “Walk On By” has also been a hit single for the Stranglers (number 21 in 1978), Sybil (number 6 in 1990) and Gabrielle (number 7 in 1997). The 1962 top 5 hit of the same name by Leroy Van Dyke is a different song entirely.
The X-Axis – w/c 7 August 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #99. By Alex Segura, Alberto Alburquerque and Pete Pantazis. The end of the Polaris four-parter, which turns out to be pretty straightforward, really. Mesmero wants to prove something because he sees his first encounter with Polaris as the only time he was really an A-lister. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, he controls Dani and gets her to do the attacking rather than just mind-controlling Lorna directly – um, why is Dani, who actually has psychic powers, an easier target than Lorna? And there’s a fairly routine “overcoming our past” bit at the end. Inoffensive, I guess, but it only touches on any of the themes it raised, and it’s nothing you need to go out of your way to read.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #14. (Annotations here.) Okay, after a slightly shaky start Fall of X seems to be hitting its stride. We’re no longer doing the spotlight issues here – instead, we’re following the former members of the Quiet Council, or at least those who aren’t off in their own books. Professor X is still keeping his silent vigil on Krakoa – and Gillen and Werneck demonstrate that they’re good enough to spend five pages recapping the plot and still make it interesting through the montage approach and the intercutting with his blank reactions. Sebastian Shaw has belatedly figured out that he’s been outwitted by Mother Righteous, because he doesn’t understand magic as well as he thinks he does, and he sets about trying to rectify the situation. And Exodus gets to do… well, I mean, of course his reaction to being dumped in a desert with the civilian population of Krakoa is to do Moses. The guy calls himself Exodus. This is the role he’s always wanted. Moreover… all this does read like a finite story rather than a long-term return to the 198, which is what worried me initially. So that’s reassuring.
Children of the Vault #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CHILDREN OF THE VAULT #1
“Tomorrow’s Children”
Writer: Deniz Camp
Artist: Luca Maresca
Colourist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. The Children of the Vault – specifically, Serafina, Perro and Fuego – stand triumphant over Cable and Bishop.
PAGES 2-4. The Children of the Vault emerge from suspended animation.
This sequence pretty much assumes that you’ve been reading X-Men and know what’s going on. For anyone who doesn’t:
The Children of the Vault debuted in X-Men #188 (2006), by Mike Carey and Chris Bachalo. The basic idea is that they were an attempt to create vastly evolved humans by having them develop in a bubble society within a time distortion vault, so that centuries of development pass for them without any significant time passing on Earth. They’re not mutants, they’re technologically enhanced posthumans. Traditionally, the Children of the Vault believe that they’re the destined inheritors of the world. During Jonathan Hickman’s run, we established that they tend to create endless iterations of the same characters, supposedly always working towards improvement.
Immortal X-Men #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #14
“Sympathy for the Scarlet Witch”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourists: David Curiel & Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Professor X on the beach of Krakoa, confronting the ruins of a half-buried Sentinel. Presumably a Planet of the Apes riff.
PAGE 2. John Romita tribute.
PAGE 3. Professor X stares into space.
The very fact that we’re seeing him without his Cerebro helmet is a symbol of the Krakoan era being over.
“X weeks later. Krakoa, population: 1.” The “X weeks later” tag also appears in X-Men #25 (well, as “X weeks ago”, but same difference). Oddly, this week’s Children of the Vault #1 just opts for “weeks later”. X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 ends with a caption noting the population of Krakoa as 1.
PAGE 4. Professor X recalls Destiny asking him to get Mystique to safety if something happens at the Gala.
This puts a different complexion on the scene at page 57 of Hellfire Gala 2023 where Professor X very aggressively tries to force Mystique to go through the gates, apparently giving her a stroke and prompting her to fall to her death. Destiny has very explicitly asked for this.
