The X-Axis – 26 August 2012
Before anyone asks, yes, you’re right – I’ve still yet to get around to reviewing X-Factor, X-Force, Gambit, New Mutants and Age of Apocalypse. Might get to them during the week, or else I’ll catch up on them when the next issue comes out. In the meantime, let’s cover the most recent X-books.
And don’t forget it’s a podcast weekend – the latest episode is just one post below.
Astonishing X-Men #53 – Lordy, this storyline is interminable.
Leave aside the high-profile gay wedding from issues #50-51, and this storyline has been built around a mystery: who’s the villain responsible for mind controlling people to attack the X-Men, and why are they doing it? This was never a particularly interesting mystery, since the X-Men get attacked by people all the time, almost as if it were some sort of genre staple or something. You need something a bit more. And the storyline hasn’t had it.
House to Astonish Episode 89
It’s been a really, really long time since our last episode, but we’re back, with an incredibly echoey, extra-long and tasty episode. We’re talking about the sad deaths of Joe Kubert and Sergio Toppi, the cancellation of the Dandy, Defenders and Avengers Academy, the changes to Marvel titles like Journey Into Mystery and Red She-Hulk in the wake of Marvel NOW!, Superman and Wonder Woman’s hookup, the cancellation of the Premiere Classic line, the newly-named Marvel movie sequels, Ed Brubaker leaving Winter Soldier and a blast through the November solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of Hawkeye, Archer & Armstrong and Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe walks with a zombie. All this plus Dennis the Menace’s amazing modern hat, an anthropomorphic Scottish indie band, the Crossover Bell, driving an issue of Grifter into a wall, the octopus that makes Marvel’s editorial decisions, countercultural cows on mopeds, John Merrick as Iron Man and Swastikabucks.
The podcast is here, on Mixcloud here, at Stitcher.com or on their free iOS or Android apps, on iTunes or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
More X-Axis…
Continuing our catch-up programme, here’s the other X-Men titles that shipped over the last few weeks…
Astonishing X-Men #52 – With the big publicity event completed, the series gets back to dealing with the main storyline. Which isn’t necessarily for the best, because the actual story – heroes are attacked by people manipulated by anonymous mind-controller – isn’t actually all that interesting. This issue shifts the emphasis to Karma and covers events from her perspective. As you undoubtedly figured out for yourself, she hasn’t really turned evil (and the book clearly doesn’t really expect you to have thought otherwise).
Writer Marjorie Liu’s angle on Karma is that she’s kind of buckling under the pressure and wants out, which both seems to come out of nowhere, considering that Karma hasn’t been much used recently, and also isn’t especially interesting. There’s some good dialogue in her scenes with Kitty and Logan, but no particularly memorable ideas to underpin it all. Couple that with a generic villain doing manipulative things that aren’t especially interesting for reasons that aren’t really hinted at, and you’ve got a story that’s almost instantly forgettable. The art’s perfectly sound, and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s flashback scenes have some very nice moments, but there’s really nothing much going on here.
Charts – 19 August 2012
One of the weirdest charts in quite some time, and it’s all the fault of the Olympic closing ceremony. While the opening ceremony was generally acclaimed as a weird but wonderful tribute to all things British, the closing ceremony – which I watched from a hotel room in Switzerland until I lost the will to live – was essentially a middle aged man sharing his record collection with us. But if you play music to a large enough audience, some of them will go out and buy it, even if it’s music they’ve heard a million times before. People are strange that way.
1. Rita Ora – “How We Do (Party)”
The X-Axis – 19 August 2012
I’ve got several weeks of comics here to work through, so covering them all in one go isn’t really an option. Let’s start off with the backlog of AvX tie-ins that have come out since last we spoke…
Avengers #28-29 – Brian Bendis has developed an odd approach to crossovers on the Avengers titles. Instead of trying to continue any ongoing stories, he more or less seems to put everything on hold in favour of a string of one-off stories, either filling out the background, or just… filling the pages, sometimes. These two issues are certainly written in the margins of the crossover, but they’re also entirely self-contained, with no attempt at any flow between them. It’s an unusual way for an ongoing series to deal with crossover events.
Summerslam 2012
Since I’ve been away for the last couple of weeks and haven’t seen any of the build-up, this may be a relatively concise rundown. We’ll see.
Summerslam is traditionally the WWE’s major PPV of the summer. In fact, there’s not much on this card that looks particularly extraordinary. In one case, that’s probably because planned celebrity involvement fell through. Otherwise, it’s something of a business-as-usual card – though one unusually light on gimmick matches.
Housekeeping
For those wondering about the upcoming schedule:-
Next episode of the podcast will be next weekend (since while I’m back in town this weekend, Al isn’t).
There’ll be a wrestling preview on Sunday, though since I haven’t actually seen any of the build-up to this show, it might be a bit sketchy.
And I have an enormous pile of X-books (and other comics) to wade through, so rather than try to do it all in one post – which would kill me – I’ll be doing a series of catch-up posts over the next week or so.
Charts – 12 August 2012
Bringing us up to date before the middle aged retro-fest on Sunday…
1. Wiley (featuring Ms D) – “Heatwave”
Second week at the top. This is in the post immediately below. Go see it there. The midweeks and the iTunes chart both indicate that two weeks will be as far as it goes.
We may now begin this week’s theme: new entries having their one week of glory that look set to plunge in the midweeks.
3. Lawson – “Taking Over Me”
Charts – 5 August 2012
Continuing our chart catch-up, this is the chart that includes sales over the week following the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Since the soundtrack was helpfully made available on iTunes – with most of the tracks available for individual download – the result is three new entries from the show, and a couple of unexpected acts appearing.
But first…
1. Wiley featuring Ms D – “Heatwave”
Charts – 29 July 2012
Well, hello there!
It’s going to take me a little while to get back up to speed with the comics – I’m now about three weeks behind, at least on the books I buy physically. But in the meantime, let’s get gently back into the swing of things by catching up with the charts. NB: The really interesting chart is arguably the one after this, which has the effects of the Olympic opening ceremony, but, oh well. (This Sunday’s chart, which has the knock on effects of the closing ceremony, looks set to be a veritable back catalogue orgy.)
Frankly, there are quite a few records on the next few charts that I haven’t heard yet. Let’s see if any pleasant surprises await!
