Charts – 16 March 2014
Since the UK music industry likes promoting records for weeks before they’re released, but doesn’t much care for promoting records over Christmas or the early new year, it’s round about this time that we start seeing a deluge of new releases. And lo and behold, there’s a lot of very forgettable stuff out this week…
39. One Direction – “Midnight Memories”
X-Men Legacy #300 – “ForgetMeNot”
Marvel has long viewed numbers as less a counting system and more a promotional opportunity, and here we have a prime example of that – a comic labelled as X-Men Legacy #300, devoted to celebrating ninety-three fabulous issues of X-Men Legacy.
Bizarre as it may seem today, the series that became X-Men Legacy started off back in 1991 as X-Men vol 2, spent many years as the flagship of the line, and changes its name to New X-Men for a while in order to play host to the Grant Morrison run. But then it became X-Men Legacy, which was essentially a vehicle for solo series to be branded under the X-Men name.
Charts – 9 March 2014
House to Astonish Episode 121
I’ve got a cold but comics doesn’t stand still while people blow their noses, so we’re soldiering on with a fresh new episode of House to Astonish. This time round, we talk about the Comixology hack; Archie’s new CCO (and new writer); Boom!’s new director and their Big Trouble in Little China series; the IDW Cartoon Network crossover; the new writers of Thunderbolts; Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore’s Leaving Megalopolis moving to Dark Horse; Titan’s new Doctor Who ongoing series; Skottie Young’s Rocket Raccoon; the Stan & Sharon Sakai benefit auctions (which are here) and Eric Stephenson’s speech to ComicsPRO. We’ve also got reviews of Moon Knight, Evil Empire and The Auteur, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is neither swings nor roundabouts. All this plus Satanism With Sabrina, rapper-hunting robots and the Man of a Thousand Handles.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
And hey, spring is coming in – what better way to mark that than with a House to Astonish t-shirt from our Spring Collection? It’s the same as our Winter Collection but please don’t tell anyone.
Charts – 2 March 2014
A quiet week for new releases, coupled with a surprise number 1 that breaks a few records…
35. Kid Ink featuring Chris Brown – “Show Me”
Rebounding from last week’s number 75 to get a third run in the top 40. Not sure what’s going on here. It’s certainly hung around a while for a song that never made it above 23.
26. Starship – “We Built This City”
Wolverine and the X-Men #42 – “Graduated?”
The end of the road, then. It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on Wolverine and the X-Men, which wraps up Jason Aaron’s run with two epilogue issues, in advance of next week’s (!) relaunch with Latour and Asrar.
While Aaron may be sticking around over on Amazing X-Men, which shares a similarly relaxed attitude to sanity, this is more than just creator reshuffling. Despite its name, Wolverine and the X-Men was never really about Wolverine and the X-Men at all. It was about the school. Marvel finally got a book about the trainees to work – albeit by the slightly questionable device of marketing it as something else. Unsurprisingly, the final issue goes for the ever popular graduation day theme – an excellent way of marking a symbolic turning point for some of the characters while leaving the school in place to grind happily on for the next creative team.
Charts – 23 February 2014
It’s time for the annual Brit Awards chart. This has become a regular feature of the download era, as the primetime awards show reminds people of records they’d forgotten to buy, or actually allows them to download live performances that duly propel songs back into the chart. Even though the ratings were the lowest in years, they’re still enough to have some impact on the lower half of the top 40.
For example…
39. The Arctic Monkeys – “Do I Wanna Know”
Originally a number 11 hit last June. The Arctic Monkeys won Best British Group. Oddly, this isn’t the song they performed on the show – that was 2012’s “R U Mine?”, which re-enters at 55.
Uncanny X-Men #17 – “You’re in the Middle of Nowhere”
Hanging over Brian Bendis’ X-Men run is the spectre of his Avengers run, in which a bunch of seemingly disparate plot threads ultimately turned out, after several years, not to even gesture vaguely in the direction of coming together.
His X-Men stories have generally done a rather better job of giving the impression that there’s a coherent plan to it all, even if it does often seem like one that could speed up a bit. But every so often you have to wonder.
Elimination Chamber 2014
Elimination Chamber is an unusual show, more for what’s going on in the wider business than for the actual card. On Monday, the WWE launches its online streaming service, WWE Network, which will offer all the future “pay-per-views” as part of the subscription – a subscription which massively undercuts the cost of actually buying them as PPVs. Subscribers will also get access to a substantial video-on-demand library, plus some original programming (though the only notable inclusion is the developmental show NXT, which is genuinely quite good these days). This is all for viewers in the US, by the way; the international launch isn’t for a while yet.
In effect, the WWE is abandoning the PPV platform, and these shows will become monthly specials designed to draw new viewers to the Network. In practice, anyone who’s remotely interested in the Network is likely to sign up in advance of Wrestlemania next month, and in the short term the company’s main revenue source is likely to be rights fees from TV contracts (which, incidentally, are all coming for renegotiation right now) – so there’s going to be an interesting tension between grabbing the ratings and steering people to the Network.
House to Astonish Episode 120
It’s a big week for movie news, as House to Astonish looks at the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer, the potential Black Widow movie and the Fantastic Four casting, as well as ReedPop’s new New York convention and the May solicitations (no, we didn’t do Dark Horse, but you could probably write those yourself). There are also reviews of Undertow, New Warriors and Loki: Ragnarok and Roll, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a horny devil. All this plus Oprah’s Skrulls, an intervention for a comics company and All-New Steeltown Rockers.
The episode 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 through our Facebook fan page, and don’t forget about our super-cool shirts available at our Redbubble store.
