Giant-Size Little Marvel AvX
How long have Skottie Young’s variant covers been going now? Long enough that you’d have thought the joke would have worn thin, but in fact, they’re holding up pretty well. The idea, and Young’s art, lends itself rather nicely to the one-panel gag format of the variant cover, and it’s now well enough established that it can start playing off its own trope.
So, sure, let’s do something with them for Secret Wars. In fact, they’ve had a one-shot before, in orbit somewhere around the Avengers vs X-Men crossover. And this is effectively the sequel. While it’s technically set on Battleworld, the Battleworld trappings barely come into play.
Starlord and Kitty Pryde
I have a couple of minor titles to cover to stop the X-Axis slipping too far behind again, so let’s deal with them tonight.
First up, Starlord and Kitty Pryde. This barely counts as an X-book, really. It’s the stand-in book for Starlord during Secret Wars. And since Starlord is one of the handful of characters who survived the destruction of the Marvel Universe and wound up as refugees on Battleworld, it even gets to feature the regular Starlord. And as for Kitty Pryde, she’s a supporting character in his book already.
What I’m saying is, this is basically three issues of Starlord. Which I don’t read. But hey.
X-Men ’92
The X-Men’s contributions to Secret Wars rest heavily on straight sequels to old stories. And given the nature of those old stories, that means the X-Battleworld is largely a case of “pick your dystopia”. But there are a couple of exceptions, and X-Men ’92 is one.
The year is telling. 1992 was not especially a banner year for X-Men comics. That would have been 1991, when X-Men and X-Force launched; by the following year, the big name artists were packing up and heading for Image. But 1992 was the year when X-Men: The Animated Series began its five year run.
Watch With Father #1: In The Night Garden
As a new parent paying serious attention to CBeebies for the first time, you may well find yourself starting with In The Night Garden. Not only is it a global success, but it’s aimed at the very youngest of children.
Your initial reaction is likely to be horror at the prospect of watching this on a regular basis. Here is the plot of a fairly typical episode of In The Night Garden: Makka Pakka washes the faces of the Pontipines, who are small, followed by the faces of the Haahoos, who are big. Here is the plot of another fairly typical episode of In The Night Garden: The Tombliboos’ trousers fall down a lot. The Tombliboos love their Tombliboo trousers. Isn’t that a pip?
Magneto vol 4 – “Last Days”
Regular readers, your long national nightmare is over. The X-books are starting to emerge from the other side of the Secret Wars crossover. X-Men ’92 is also finished, if you’re reading it in digital form. First up, though, Magneto. This final volume collects its Secret Wars tie-in arc, clocking in at a modest four issues, and apparently leading to the end of the series.
Participation in Secret Wars seems to have been mandatory for virtually all Marvel Universe titles – the exceptions being the quirkfests and, for some reason, Guardians Team-Up. But there was at least a choice between doing a stand-in series set on Battleworld, or a “Last Days” tie-in in the margins of Secret Wars #1.
Watch With Father, Prologue: Camberwick Green
On Monday 3 April 1978, when I was three, the BBC began once again to repeat Camberwick Green, the everyday tale of stop-motion folk. The chances are good that I was watching.
For one thing, if you wanted to watch pre-school TV in Britain in the late 70s – or, for that matter, if you wanted to put your child in front it – then your options were pretty limited. There were only three channels. And there were no video recorders. (Well, there were, but you probably didn’t have one.) So if you wanted to watch it, you had to watch it live.
House to Astonish Episode 136
Something of a scattershot selection of news for you this time out, with discussion of Secret Wars being extended to nine issues; the Scarlet Witch artist announcement; Mads Mikkelsen’s negotiations to bring villainy to the Doctor Strange movie; the newly-announced Guardians of Infinity series; casting news for the Flash and Agents of SHIELD shows; and Superman’s career as a watch thief. We’ve also got reviews of Last Days of Ant-Man and Over the Garden Wall, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a sustainable source of amusement. All this plus photographs of gravel, the World Arson Championships and a tiny vole wearing a full tuxedo.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or at our Facebook fan page. And don’t forget that you can get our super-chic t-shirts at our Redbubble store – it’s still summer, you know.
Housekeeping
Various things have kept me from doing any full length posts over the last week (and probably will for the next few days too). At least two of those things involve plans for things that are coming up in the future, though, so stick with us. In the meantime, here’s where we stand on blog content:
The X-Axis remains effectively on hiatus, due to everything being in mid-arc until Secret Wars ends. The exception to that is Magneto, which ought to be wrapping up sooner or later. And since Jeff Lemire is coming aboard, I thought I might do the first arc of Descender, if time permits.
The Chikara posts remain on their as-and-when non-schedule.
The chart posts are going down to a once-a-month-or-thereabouts roundup of number ones and other particularly notable stuff, because there’s really not enough going on on the singles chart these days to make a weekly post worth the time it takes.
And, because a surprisingly large number of people said they’d read it, a series of posts on British pre-school children’s TV is coming. Look for a prologue post in the next week or so.
Chikara 15.6: “Let ’em Eat Cake”
Preamble: This is the second show in the UK tour, and see the previous post in this series for some comments on the practical issues of writing four shows on consecutive days – principally, that nothing can happen on this show that would be essential knowledge for the next two shows of the tour, since those audiences won’t have seen this one. This particular show is the high water mark of that issue; it consists almost entirely of Challenge of the Immortals tournament matches, in the early stages of a round robin that runs through to the rest of the year. So while it’s certainly useful to burn through some of these early matches and get the scoreboard looking a bit more meaningful, very little of immediate consequence actually happens on this show.
When and where: It’s Saturday 4 April 2015, and we’re… still in Wolverhampton. Yes, that’s right, they did a four-date UK tour and half of it was in Wolverhampton. We’re moving on to Cardiff and London next. The show is sold out.
1. Challenge of the Immortals: Crown & Court v Dasher’s Dugout, Match 1 (more…)
Charts – 14 August 2015
Some housekeeping to start. 2015 is continuing to be a remarkably lethargic year for the singles chart – which seems to be in part a consequence of adding streaming data, which (mildly) favours records with enduring appeal and squeezes out what would otherwise have been one-week entries at the lower end of the top 40. That also means that the records that are making the top 40 are tending to be less interesting on the whole. That being the case, I’m thinking of putting this feature on hiatus for a bit, or perhaps converting it to a monthly round-up or something. Instead, I thought I might do some posts on CBeebies, the BBC’s channel for young children. Because I see a lot of CBeebies these days. And several people have actually said they’d read it…
Anyhow.
39. Tough Love featuring Ginuwine – “Pony (Jump On It)”
