The X-Axis – 3 March 2013
It’s a podcast weekend, so check out the show one post down, where we’re reviewing Justice League of America, Nova and Five Weapons.
Meanwhile, it’s another of those weeks where I haven’t yet received the books that I’m still buying in physical form, so we’ll be back later in the week to cover Astonishing X-Men #59, Gambit #9, and X-Treme X-Men #11. As it happens, that still leaves us with plenty to talk about. If I have time, I’ll also try to have a look over the first six issues of X-Men: Legacy, which are going to form the first trade paperback. No promises, mind.
Uncanny Avengers #4 – This is the end of the first arc, but I see that the collected edition will actually run up to issue #5 – which, to judge from the solicitations, will contain a one-shot story rounding out both the cast and the page count.
House to Astonish – The Alternate Titles
Anyone who heard me talk about it a few episodes back or seen the interview with me that went up on the Beat a little while back might remember that I recently discovered the scrap of paper on which I’d written the various names which I’d come up with for the podcast back before we launched.
Having made that list, Paul highlighted a half-dozen or so that he liked best, and we then picked one of those for the name of the podcast.
We figured it might be fun to let you see the full list – we meant to put it up for the hundredth but with everything else that was going on in that episode we totally forgot. So here it is! The ones in italics were the final six, with House to Astonish (obv) being the winner.
- The Men Without Fear
- House to Astonish
- Secondary Mutation
- Because You Demanded It
- Heroes for the ’90s
- Words and Pictures
- Variant Edition [NB: we didn’t realise at the time that this was already the name of a podcast]
- The Team-Up You Demanded
- Graphic Novelty
- Motion Picture Funnies Weekly
- The Fill-In Artists
- Direct Edition
- In This Issue… Someone Dies!
- Secret Origin
- Prestige Format
- Four Panels
- Digest Readers
- Superman’s Pals Paul and Al
- Squarebound
- Deadly Hands of Comics
- World’s Fannest
- The Panel Show
- Our Comics At War
- The Shed of Ideas
- Meanwhile, Across Town
- Border Skirmishes
House to Astonish Episode 101
Following our 100th episode extravaganza, we’re back with a regular old-fashioned episode of House to Astonish, with discussion of the Pandora and Batman/Superman ongoings, the expansion of the Fables empire, the Brother Lono miniseries, Gail Simone’s Red Sonja, the death of Damian Wayne, the Unwritten OGN, the Larfleeze title, Monkeybrain’s print distribution, IDW’s cartoon licenses, Columbia University’s acquisition of the Elfquest archives, the possibilities of Marvel Fist, the coming and going of WTF Month and Steven Sanders’s Symbiosis Kickstarter (it’s a busy couple of weeks). We’ve also got reviews of Five Weapons, Justice League of America and Nova, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a master of spin. All this plus the DC New 52 Continuity Steerage Sub-Committee, a tasteless, odourless neurotoxin and a competently plumbed-in bathroom.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the player below. You can also listen to us via Stitcher.com or their iOS or Android apps, or get us on iTunes (where every review helps).
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Charts – 24 February 2013
Another quiet week for new releases, this time for very good reason. This chart covers the week of the Brit Awards, the UK’s equivalent of the Grammies, which was always going to dominate the news cycle, and always spawns a few unlikely midweek hits thanks to re-entries from winners and people who performed on the show. Plus, the only genuine major release of the week is a high profile charity single, and nobody wants to go up against that. So, not much going on.
But here’s what there is.
A re-entry because he performed it at the Brits. Originally a number one last year.
38. Tyler James (featuring Kano) – “Worry About You”
Tyler James is the closest The Voice UK came to discovering a star, which is to say that his previously comatose career has at least begun to stir again. These things are relative, though – “Worry About You” only just makes the top 40, even with the support of Radio 1 (who are kind of obliged). All that said, it’s an okay record and really did deserve to go higher.
The X-Axis Archive
After many, many questions from commenters asking where they’re available, we’ve decided to finally make the archive of the old X-Axis reviews available as a permanent link here on the site. You’ll find it on the right hand side for your ease of access. NB: this only goes up to the point where Paul moved his blogging to If Destroyed, so for anything after that point, check the If Destroyed site instead.
The X-Axis – 24 February 2013
Back to another quiet week for the X-books, but since I’ve got a bit of spare time for once, I’ll chuck in some of this week’s other new releases for a change. (Actually, it’s not such a quiet week for the X-books if you take a broader idea of the line – there’s also Deadpool #5 and Wolverine Max #4, but I don’t count either of them, and besides, I’m buying Wolverine Max in trade. Digression over.)
Justice League of America #1 – Not to be confused with the other Justice League, who are apparently not of America. In fact, that turns out not to be a technicality so much as the starting point for this book’s premise: the US government can’t control the Justice League, so it wants one of its own. Hence, Justice League of America, the operative words being “of America”.
Belarus.
I think, during the podcast, we mentioned the magnificently misjudged Belarussian Eurovision entry, “I Love Belarus”. There’s kind of a protocol in Eurovision – humble and welcoming celebration of national culture, yes. Full-bore patriotic flagwaving, no. After all, you can’t vote for your own song.
Anyhow. This be it. Never has Belarus been more emphatically and catchily endorsed. The WWE ought to give someone a Belarus gimmick just so they can use this as theme music.
Charts – 17 February 2013
The X-Axis – 17 February 2013
Right! Back to business as usual!
And after a couple of quiet weeks, this time it’s the inevitable deluge…
Age of Apocalypse #12 – Just another two issues to go, and those are both part of the X-Termination crossover. As I recall, the previous issue seemed to make the pacing work for it, at the cost of de-emphasising some of the individual cast members’ storylines. With this issue, though, David Lapham appears to be back to trying to get through loads of outstanding plots in the time available. Logan has been defeated, at least in the sense that he no longer has Apocalypse’s power and he’s sane again. But of course that doesn’t just lead to his military apparatus vanishing, so the government is still pretty much in control. So what we get is an issue that reads like it started life as the idea for a second year of stories, with Monet emerging as the rival leader figure now that she’s got some chance of coming out on top. At around the same time, we’ve also got Graydon Creed confronting his father, Goodnight being exposed within the Hellfire Club (the actual role of which has never really been made terribly clear), and the scientists wondering what they’re going to do with the power of Apocalypse that they’ve managed to harness with their Big Machine. There are a lot of threads being drawn together here, as is inevitable when a series with longer term plans is being wrapped up, and in one sense Lapham is handling them all well – but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these are storylines which were intended to play out at a much, much more leisurely pace.
House to Astonish Episode 100
It’s finally here – the hundredth episode of House to Astonish! We’re joined by Carrie Kennedy, Susi O’Brien, Stu West and Amal El-Mohtar to discuss topic suggested by friends, listeners and comics pros, encompassing digital comics, boycotts, the greatest comics out today, what Marvel would be like if they’d done right by Kirby, favourite superhero movies, reinventions of Marvel characters, the Eurovision Song Contest, pie, monkeys and what goes on inside the human stomach. We’ve got contributions from Reilly Brown, Jeff Lester of Wait, What?, Steve Morris of Comics Bulletin, Steven Sanders, Al Ewing, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool, Heidi MacDonald of the Beat, Alex de Campi, Michael Kupperman, Stephen Wacker, Antony Johnston, Kieron Gillen, Justin Jordan, Lauren Sankovitch, Andy Khouri and Andrew Wheeler of Comics Alliance, Brandon Graham and Emma Rios. All this plus cake, booze, an alcoholic with a spanner, Wolverine vs Montessori and Wong’s hash brownies in our longest ever episode (by 25 seconds).
You’ll have noticed that we’ve had a spruce-up of our design – the immensely talented James Wendelborn has designed our new logos, and you may be pleased to learn that we’ve put those to good use already in our official House to Astonish Redbubble store – if you want to show the world your affinity for the show there’s now a way to do it! You can find it here – it’s the swankiest way to combine comics podcasting and sartorial excellence.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think of the show, either in the comments, on Twitter, by email on our Facebook fan page.
Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to the show or who’s enjoyed it so far – here’s to many more episodes.
