Royal Rumble 2012
Welcome back, for the first wrestling PPV preview of 2012!
Although this is not the easiest show to preview. The Royal Rumble is traditionally the second biggest show of the year. The winner of the titular 30-man battle royal gets to challenge for the world title (or, these days, one of the world titles) in the main event at Wrestlemania. It is, therefore, the point where storylines kick into gear to start the long build to Wrestlemania in the spring. It’s been in that role for 25 years now. And, aware that the Royal Rumble pretty much sells itself, the WWE has more or less left it to do that. They’ve announced a couple of title matches and something for John Cena; they’ve pushed the Rumble itself in general terms; but they haven’t announced anything else for the undercard, nor have they announced a full list of participants for the Rumble itself. Apparently there is actually a reason for this. We shall see.
1. The 2012 Royal Rumble. The design of the Royal Rumble match – with wrestlers drawing numbers at (ahem) random and entering in sequence over the course of an hour – is a masterstroke, allowing them to tell a range of stories during the hour. A straight 30-man battle royal, with everyone starting in the ring at the same time, is usually just turgid. Until the field is thinned out, there’s no room to do anything. The Royal Rumble solves that problem brilliantly.
Sure, the element of random luck would make it a ludicrous way for any real sport to choose its top title contender. But in wrestling, built-in unfairness is a positive boon.
House to Astonish Episode 77
Slightly earlier than usual (because it’s my wedding anniversary this weekend so I’m going to be away), we’ve got just shy of an hour and a half of chat for you on DC and Oni’s new logos, the public bust-ups on Infinite, Static Shock and Ashes and at Archie and a look at April’s solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of Infestation 2, Secret Avengers and Prophet and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe gets its buttons mashed. All this plus Arms-Stick-On Boy, a kid whose head is on fire and a look behind the scenes at an early meeting of the Image founders.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or accessible via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Charts – 22 January 2012
Well, I don’t much care for it, but what do I know? “Domino” by Jessie J is number 1 for a second week, which must be heartening news for anyone who has money invested in Katy Perry’s next album. It helps, of course, that the release schedules are still pretty quiet, so that she doesn’t have much competition. Still, the last song to spend two weeks at the top was “We Found Love” by Rihanna back in November, so she must be doing something right.
The X-Axis – 22 January 2012
It occurs to me that some of you may be wondering why I didn’t review Magneto: Not a Hero #3 when it came out a couple of weeks back. Well, the short answer is that it didn’t show up in my delivery, but since I didn’t notice, and nor (it seems) did any of you, I’m kind of figuring nobody else really cares. Such is the reality of X-Men spin-off minis these days. Which, to be fair, is one reason why Marvel seems to be giving up on such projects – albeit in favour of extra issues of the core titles. Because hey, when you’ve got a nice basket, put all your eggs in it. That’s always worked, down through history.
Anyway! This week, we have four X-books and a couple of other titles of interest, at least one of which may well show up on next week’s podcast too.
Generation Hope #15 – Bleeding Cool has an advance copy of the April solicitations and rightly points out that this book doesn’t seem to be on it, which would imply cancellation at issue #17. If you’ve been reading the sales charts, this won’t come as much of a surprise. For whatever reason, despite extensive promotion in Uncanny X-Men with an entire lead-in story, the book never found the audience you might expect, and the Regenesis relaunch had only a minor effect on sales. And writer James Asmus had previously said that Marvel were guaranteeing him one story arc. And pretty much everything down at the bottom end of Marvel’s range has been axed in the Great Scouring. So… that’s where we are, it seems.
Charts – 15 January 2012
An odd week. The midweek charts were practically dead, with a scattering of new entries right at the bottom. All of them have picked up pace significantly in the second half of the week, presumably because radio is now returning to normal, and listeners are slowly picking up on the new songs that are entering rotation.
We also have a new number 1, as “Domino” by Jessie J climbs to the top on its third week. Regular readers will have picked up that I’m rather underwhelmed by it. It’s catchy enough, I guess, but there’s something about Jessie J herself that I find rather unconvincing. I feel like I’m watching a string of tried-and-tested ideas that she’s picked up from studying other artists, with no real soul holding it together. If you fed a load of pop songs to a computer and told it to make more based on the patterns it could discern, it’d come up with something like Jessie J. This month’s template: the complete works of Katy Perry.
The X-Axis – 15 January 2012
It’s a podcast weekend, so don’t forget to check out the show, one post down. This week’s reviews are Fatale, Scarlet Spider, and Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye. And now… other comics!
Batwoman #5 – This book gives me something of a dilemma. On the one hand, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s great to see that DC are happy to give JH Williams III a book to use as a vehicle where he can cut loose, and the art is arguably enough in itself to justify the price of admission. On the other hand, the actual story doesn’t do much for me at all – it’s a rather confused tale of mad ghosts stealing children, with a subplot about a dodgy government agency trying to enlist Batwoman as an agent. These things are fine as far as they go, and it’s nice to see Williams dusting off characters from his much-loved series Chase, but it’s hard to deny that the art and the story in this book aren’t playing at the same level. And that kind of undercuts the effectiveness of the art, since I’m not sure there’s enough substance to ground the visual pyrotechnics.
House to Astonish Episode 76
New year, new podcast, with loads of chat on the launches and cancellations of the New 52, DC’s unusual late shipping and potential new logo, Rob Liefeld’s new assignments, the Omega Effect crossover, Walt Simonson’s upcoming Avengers run, the new Captain America team-up book and Mark Millar and Frank Quitely’s new Icon series. There are also reviews of Fatale, Scarlet Spider and Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe could be underwater love. All this plus chin-straps, boobs on dinosaurs and Captain Bum.
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.
Charts – 8 January 2012
It’s always quiet in early January, since nobody starts promoting new singles until Christmas is comfortably behind them. Things start to pick up a little this week, but it’s still not exactly a jam-packed chart. With the Christmas novelty records also out of the way, that leaves the long-running hits from last year to trade places at the top of the chart. Last week it was Coldplay. This week, for some reason, it’s “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida, which came out in November and has been hanging around the top ten for eight weeks.
The X-Axis – 8 January 2012
The big release this week is probably Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Fatale #1, which is indeed excellent – but I figure we’ll be talking about that on the podcast next week. Besides which, there are seven X-books out, which is a lot – and a couple of them are also fairly noteworthy. So…
Avengers: X-Sanction #2 – The thing about Jeph Loeb is that he has become a writer who is terribly easy to damn with faint praise. Over the last few years, his name has been attached to comics so atrocious that these days he can exceed expectations by dint of intelligibility alone. And it’s only fair to acknowledge that, if you have your expectations set that low, X-Sanction exceeds them comfortably. It does make sense, in a broad brush kind of way. The characters have passably intelligible motivations. And some of the flashbacks to Cable and Hope are genuinely well written – I like the scene of her putting on chunks of metal in an attempt to emulate her father figure.
Charts – 1 January 2012
This is the annual chart covering the dead week between Christmas and New Year, when no new records are released. But that doesn’t mean it’s completely dormant. The records that were being pushed specifically for Christmas week are all gone; the Christmas singles from the back catalogue have vanished too. In their place are a handful of new entries, and a raft of re-entries sparked by “year in review” playlisting.
Perhaps surprisingly, given its titanic first-week sales, the Military Wives single didn’t manage a second week at the top. That’s partly because its sales were front loaded into Christmas week, and also because its sales were overwhelming in physical format – meaning that it takes a particular hit from the shops being closed. Instead, the surprise first number one of 2012 is “Paradise” by Coldplay, which came out in September.
