Charts – 15 June 2014
The World Cup is here, which means a batch of football-related singles make the chart. Strangely, one of the isn’t really here because of the World Cup at all. Meawhile, at the bottom end of the chart, basically random stuff!
36. Lil Wayne featuring Drake – “Believe Me”
The lead single from Lil Wayne’s upcoming album “Tha Carter V”. Strangely, it has no video yet and isn’t officially on YouTube (not that it’s hard to find unofficially). Wayne has appeared as a guest on tons of tracks dating back to 2005, but he’s had very little UK success in his own right; this is only the third time one of his own singles has charted. And one of the other two had Bruno Mars on it.
“Valentine’s Day” – Savage Wolverine #20
The regular Wolverine series is (obviously) the more important of this week’s two Wolverine issues, but let’s deal with this one briefly. The theory of Savage Wolverine is presumably that with the ability to do stories from any point in Wolverine’s long history, you have a vast range of scenarios to draw on. You can go anywhere in the world over a period of a century or so. If nothing else, diversity ought to be readily achievable.
And yet here we are, three issues later, back in the Prohibition. Perhaps that’s more of a scheduling error than anything else. Frank Tieri has always leaned towards crime stories and it’s unsurprising that he would think this period suits him. In terms of his interests, it certainly does.
House to Astonish Episode 127
Back to recording without an audience, as Paul and I talk about the creative changes on Moon Knight, the Edge of Spider-Verse miniseries, the new Deathlok ongoing, the Hawkeye v Deadpool mini (and the numbering thereof), DC’s upcoming slate of movies, directorial news for both Ant-Man and Doctor Strange, the casting of the Kingpin, CB Cebulski and Jeanine Schaefer’s career moves and ReedPop’s Super Week. We’ve also got reviews of Armor Hunters, Infinity Man and the Forever People and… um… Angry Birds, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a teller of tall tales. All this plus cheap, non-brand Chinese superheroes, the aspirational underpants demographic and seven-toed tree-climbers.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page, and don’t forget you can be sartorially sensational with our super shirts at our Redbubble page.
Charts – 8 June 2014
Amazing X-Men Annual #1
If it was surprising to see a blatant filler story crop up in the ongoing Amazing X-Men title last month, it is rather less so to see one in the first Amazing X-Men Annual. Annuals have always tended to be a venue for the inconsequential, and there was a lot of sense – commercially speaking, at any rate – in Marvel’s decision a decade or so back to just stop making the things and put the resources into making extra issues of the regular titles instead. But of course, that means getting extra material out of your regular creators, which is sometimes easier said than done. That may be why these things are starting to re-emerge; if it’s plainly not going to pass for a regular issue, maybe better not to make the attempt.
Charts – 1 June 2014
Payback 2014
If the television is anything to go by, the WWE’s prime motivation in naming one of its minor annual shows “Payback” was to let people do promos claiming that Payback will be a bitch. With this card, that may be closer to the truth than usual. Payback 2014 looks like a dog.
This is basically a water-treading exercise while we wait for the rather more important “Money in the Bank” show next month. The card is a mixture of rematches and blatant filler – many of which ought to be fine as matches, but don’t seem particularly inspiring in any wider sense. Consequently, this preview is not going to take long. You might want to just look at the live show post immediately below.
House to Astonish – Live!
It’s been a long time coming, but here it is – House to Astonish Live, recorded yesterday at the City Cafe, Edinburgh before a live audience. Paul and I are discussing the departures at Marvel Studios, the fallout from the Graphic.ly closure, the cancellation of Iron Patriot and the upcoming Avengers event. We’ve also got an interview with a comics legend, a live reenactment of scenes from a truly terrible recent comic and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook is coming soon. All this plus an incident with jam, the Windows 7 approach to continuity patches, an octopus with spears for arms and a small pea.
Between ticket sales and direct donations, we’ve now raised just over £700 for Alzheimer Scotland. Thanks so much to everyone who came along – if you’d like to help us push that even higher, please do consider donating at our donation page.
In the meantime, the podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available through the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, via email, on Twitter or at our Facebook fan page. Don’t forget too that you can get our fab and funky shirts at our Redbubble store.
Charts – 25 May 2014
It’s getting on in the week, better get this one finished while it’s still vaguely topical…
40. Zedd (featuring Foxes) – “Clarity”
This is a re-entry, having originally got to 29 at the start of last year, but I’m honestly not sure why it’s back. Foxes’ current single “Holding Onto Heaven” drops to 39 this week.
38. Nicki Minaj – “Pills and Potions”
This was an unpromoted midweek release, and it’ll be climbing once it’s had a full week on sale. It’s the lead single from her upcoming album “The Pink Print”, and it’s a curious choice – largely a mid-pace piano ballad.
35. Little Mix – “Salute”
“No Goats, No Glory” – Amazing X-Men #7
I’m running late this week, but hey, this one shouldn’t take long. Amazing X-Men #7 is notable more for what it isn’t than for what it contains. What it isn’t, is a comic that particularly matters – however you choose to define “matters” – because it’s a throwaway fill-in issue.
Firestar and Iceman are out shopping when they bump into an alien baby who’s being chased down by Spider-Man, who needs to retrieve him in order to get back a goat mascot who’s been abducted by aliens. (For reasons not shared with posterity, Spider-Man was looking after the goat.)
