Charts – 8 December 2013
Everything’s in mid storyline this week, and I still haven’t found time to read that second Wolverine Max TPB, so let’s do this while it’s fresh. It’s a quiet week on the release schedule, as we’re entering the phase where regular record promotion winds down for the Christmas break. Which leaves the number one slot wide open for a change.
39. Justin Bieber – “Change Me”
The penultimate “Music Mondays” track is another one that would not normally have been considered for singles release in a million years. Actually, looking back, this seems to be a weirdly uncommercial album for somebody like him. This is the lowest charting of the nine released to date, but the tenth and final song is getting a music video and some degree of regular promotion, so I expect it to do better.
House to Astonish Episode 115
After last week’s debacle, we’re very pleased to be able to say that things seem to have worked out a good bit better this time round – we’ve got news about Stan Lee Media’s latest lawsuit, Fox’s Marvel movie universe, the X-Men movie after next, Warners’ casting of Wonder Woman (and yes, we know her name’s not Godot, that was just for a rubbish joke, we promise), Marvel’s digital trades giveaway and the new Wolverine & the X-Men and Magneto series. We’ve also got reviews of Inhumanity, Rover Red Charlie and Black Science, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is retro chic. On top of that, we’ve got interviews with Al Ewing, Kelly Sue DeConnick and Kieron Gillen which we recorded at Thought Bubble. All this plus Superman eating a puppy, scratch & sniff numbering, the sound of fighting geese and the true story of what killed all the Romans.
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. Please do also leave iTunes reviews if that’s your thing, and remember that we have a range of very swish t-shirts and hoodies available via our Redbubble store.
Charts – 1 December 2013
Wolverine and the X-Men Annual #1
It’s a podcast weekend! But GarageBand has eaten it, so you’ll have to wait another week.
In the meantime, let’s have a look at the first and, it seems, only Wolverine and the X-Men annual. This is the X-books’ token contribution to the “Infinity” crossover, which it has otherwise managed to sit out, through the clever expedient of doing a crossover of its own. It seems we’re now back to the days when the X-books largely get special dispensation from participating in these books.
Podcast Update
Due to Garageband being an unutterable piece of garbage, we won’t have a podcast for you this week. Apologies. We’ll try to convene again next weekend if we can, where you’ll be able to hear the interviews with Kelly Sue DeConnick, Al Ewing and Kieron Gillen which were recorded at Thought Bubble.
Charts – 24 November 2013
Uncanny X-Men #14
A single issue story nestling between longer arcs, in which Brian Bendis turns his attention back to one of the rogue team’s students, Benjamin Deeds. He’s the one who, thus far, has merely demonstrated the ability to change shape to look like whoever’s standing right next to him. This is obviously not very useful.
The main thrust of this issue is to establish that what we’ve seen from him thus far is just the most visible aspect of a rather more useful power that he simply hasn’t got under control yet. (more…)
Savage Wolverine #9-11
Yes, this came out last week, but I’m running late.
Savage Wolverine is apparently meant to be a sort of Legends of the Dark Knight for Wolverine, with different creators taking turns to do their own stories without having to worry much about continuity. In practice, the previous two arcs weren’t the best demonstration of the format. Zeb Wells and Joe Madureira’s story was an off cut repurposed from Avenging Spider-Man, while Frank Cho’s vision for the character didn’t get much more elaborate than “here are some things that I think it’d be cool to draw.”
Survivor Series 2013
Survivor Series is meant to be one of the more important B-shows on the WWE’s PPV calendar, if only because it’s been around a good long while, but the line-up this year is, to put it politely, largely uninspiring. There are a couple of promising matches on the undercard, but not much to persuade people to shell out.
1. WWE Title – Randy Orton © v The Big Show. Common sense might have suggested that after several months of being screwed out of the title, Daniel Bryan had to win the thing at some point, if only to provide some sense of closure. Common sense, however, is in short supply among WWE writers, and so we’re simply moving on to another challenger.
Charts – 16 November 2013
If you haven’t heard our five-year anniversary podcast yet, with special guests Graeme McMillan and Jeff Lester from “Wait, What?”, then it’s one post down – and check out their latest episode over at Savage Critic. Many thanks to both of them – I think it’s a really good episode.
And now… stuff!
39. Rudimental (featuring Emeli Sande) – “Free”
