House to Astonish Episode 108
We’ve got a brand new episode of House to Astonish for you, with a chunky run through Man of Steel‘s opening box office, the recent developments in the Marvel/Friedrich Ghost Rider litigation, Jeff Parker and Mark Laming’s King’s Watch and September’s solicitations (except IDW’s, which we forgot about). We’ve also got reviews of Six-Gun Gorilla, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and Superman Unchained, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe ain’t got no body. All this plus four-year-olds in Mongolia, a German shortwave radio station and the varied career of Marvel’s busiest and most mysterious artist.
The podcast is available 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.
Don’t forget to check out our super-swanky T-shirt store too – look cool, pay for hosting fees.
Charts – 9 June 2013
This week: X Factor alumni fall slightly short of expectations, Voice contestant does rather better. It’s Reality TV Show Tales!
39. The Goo-Goo Dolls – “Iris”
38. John Legend – “Ordinary People”
37. Disclosure featuring Sam Smith – “Latch”
Two of the now familiar perennials from reality TV, plus Disclosure, presumably because of the spillover effect from their album release. This has become a routine phenomenon at the bottom end of the top 40, though with Britain’s Got Talent over for another year, things should quieten down.
22. Kodaline – “Love Like This”
The X-Axis – 9 June 2013
It’s one of our rare quiet weeks! (Well, there’s the Wolverine: Season One graphic novel, but I don’t review those. Not in the week of release, at any rate.)
All-New X-Men #12 – Apparently someone’s decided that it’s time to start pushing the Uncanny Avengers team into the other X-books, since they show up in two of this week’s titles. All-New has them show up to speak confront the remaining Silver Age X-Men (plus Kitty and Wolverine), whom you might recall them blasting out of the sky in the previous issue. But this is a Brian Bendis comic, so once the very expensive aircraft has been wrecked, everyone can settle down to some Very Important Talking.
Charts – 2 June 2013
In which the run of high-selling number one singles continues. Plus – back catalogue debris washed up on the shores of reality TV!
39. Ellie Goulding – “Anything Could Happen”
37. The Script – “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”
Back catalogue downloads sparked by Britain’s Got Talent, I believe.
35. Bruno Mars – “Treasure”
The X-Axis – 2 June 2013
It’s a busy week, with X-Men relaunching, Wolverine and the X-Men kicking off its next major storyline, and Savage Wolverine wrapping up Frank Cho’s arc.
Well, kind of.
It’s also a podcast weekend, so don’t forget to check one post down for reviews that include a fuller discussion of X-Men.
Gambit #13 – Hmm. This book is on its way to imminent cancellation, and so naturally enough, it’s in wrap-up mode. The lengthy Joelle arc ended last month, but seemed to be setting up a cliffhanger where Gambit’s thievery-related sidekick Fence had been killed by Tombstone, or something to that effect. In this issue, Tombstone’s nowhere to be seen; instead, it’s an issue of Gambit trying to help his friend by stealing technology from Tony Stark’s apartment – which is going to help, apparently, because Fence is a cyborg, so, yeah, technology.
House to Astonish Episode 107
New month, new podcast, and Paul and I have got comicsy natterings for you on Rebellion’s limited Zenith hardcover (and the legal implications thereof), Paul Jenkins leaving Marvel and DC for BOOM!, the ever-expanding cast of Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel’s wranglings with Fox over the cinematic versions of Quicksilver. We’ve also got reviews of Supermag, The Wake and X-Men, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a first-level magic user. All this plus Hose to Astonish, Ronan Keating the Accuser and golfing in a general sense.
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, via email, on Twitter or on our Facebook fan page.
Don’t forget, you can be both stylish and supportive by checking out (and hopefully investing in) one of our swish new T-shirts.
Charts – 26 May 2013
After four weeks (and with their album now available to buy instead), Daft Punk’s reign at the top comes to an end. We can now return to our regularly scheduled business of records entering at number 1!
40. Evanescence – “Bring Me To Life”
Performed on Britain’s Got Talent, as if you couldn’t guess.
30. The 1975 – “The City”
The X-Axis – 26 May 2013
This week: some anthology filler, a crossover issue, the X-Men are going to fight Dormammu any time now, and inter-title continuity shows up where I’d least expect it.
A+X #8 – So yeah, this book is still going.
Leaving aside the dubious commercial wisdom of trying to sell an anthology title to today’s readers, you would think that A+X‘s broad remit at least provided it with a fair opportunity to do something entertaining. In theory, the only requirement for an A+X story is to fill half an issue with a team-up between two heroes, with one being primarily associated with the Avengers, and the other being primarily associated with the X-Men. Given the vast number of characters in either camp, that’s a huge number of combinations.
Charts – 19 May 2013
It wasn’t just Eurovision this week! There’s also a batch of new entries, none of which is troubling Daft Punk in the slightest!
38. Gabrielle Aplin – “Please Don’t Say You Love Me”
This was a number 6 hit in February. It’ll be back because of a spillover effect from the release of her album this week.
36. Birdy – “People Help The People”
This was on The Voice… er, two weeks ago. Delayed effect? Or was it just listed as a discount track on Amazon?
27. Mariah Carey (featuring Miguel) – “#Beautiful”
Climbing from last week’s 39, and it’s still climbing on iTunes – so perhaps this isn’t quite the dud it first appeared. But the midweek chart doesn’t show it going much further.
23. Tich – “Dumb”
Eurovision 2013
There is truly nothing quite like the Eurovision Song Contest. For those of you reading this outside Europe, a brief bit of context: it’s a contest in which countries from across a very broadly defined Europe each enter a song, and then there’s a Europe-wide phone vote (combined with scores from national judges) to determine a winner. Long regarded in the west as a piece of amusing kitsch, the contest is taken rather more seriously by the newer entrants from the east. The result is a baffling mixture of legitimate pop, sentimental ballads about love and/or global unity, odd novelty records, inexplicable misfires, and genuinely interesting curios that would never get an international audience anywhere else.
The show is hosted each year by the winner of the previous contest, a prize widely regarded as something of a curse, since it costs a fortune even with the contribution from the big five. Consequently, there was some relief when Sweden won last year, since they can actually afford to host it. Even so, the wise Scandinavians have tried to rein things in a bit this year, sending the show to Malmo rather than Stockholm, and dialling back the crazy displays of excess that have characterised some recent years. (When the Russians hosted, they claimed to have one third of the world’s LCD televisions on the stage, or something insane like that.)
