Heroes Reborn: Magneto & The Mutant Force #1
HEROES REBORN: MAGNETO & THE MUTANT FORCE #1
“Beware! Psychic Rescue in Progress!”
by Steve Orlando, Bernard Chang & David Curiel
So.
This is a thing.
Why is this a thing?
I do not know.
I do not know why this is a thing.
Well. Maybe I know why this is a thing.
Heroes Reborn was name of the 1996/7 event where Avengers, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Captain America were relaunched by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. The 2021 Heroes Reborn has nothing to do with it whatsoever. I can only assume the name was chosen for trademark renewal.
That’s always a good impression to put front and centre, isn’t it? Trademark renewal.
It’s an Avengers arc which has sprawled into an event comic. History has been changed, the Avengers never existed, and now the biggest heroes of the Marvel Universe are the Squadron Supreme of America. Who are basically a hard-right JLA.
I couldn’t care less about Jason Aaron’s Avengers and I couldn’t care less about Heroes Reborn. I gather the gimmick of the main series is something to do with “the Marvel Universe, but if it was a bit more like the DCU”. Is that interesting? It’s an own-brand Amalgam, isn’t it?
Charts – 28 May 2021
Well, that didn’t take long.
1. Olivia Rodrigo – “Good 4 U”
4. Olivia Rodrigo – “Deja Vu”
7. Olivia Rodrigo – “Traitor”
Yes, it’s the release of Olivia Rodrigo’s album “Sour”, which enters at number 1 on the album chart, and promptly places the maximum three tracks in the single chart. Demonstrating her ability to write about her break-up in any musical genre, “Good 4 U” is the Paramore version, and climbs to number 1 on its second week out. It’s her second number 1 single and, if you care about such things, she’s the youngest artist to have had simultaneous number 1s on the single and album chart. To be honest, having simultaneous number 1s isn’t that unusual – it happened four times in 2020 – but while the list is lengthy, it’s also mainly made up of A-listers. And Olly Murs.
New Mutants #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #18
“Homecoming”
by Vita Ayala & Rod Reis
COVER / PAGE 1: Karma, apparently readying herself to fight in the Crucible. Behind her, a symbolic representation of her brother Tran, via the white rabbit that he manifested as in Otherworld via Mirage’s powers.
PAGES 2-4. Dani calls up Tran so that Xi’an can speak to her.
Basically, Karma explains the plot. The best telepaths on Krakoa can’t get Tran’s mind out of her body, so they’re going to have to kill her and resurrect her instead. Since Krakoa frowns on outright suicide, this means the Crucible. We’re seeing an increasing undercurrent of scepticism about Krakoan rituals in books like Way of X, but this story plays the Crucible pretty much straight – it’s a second chance, it’s liberation, it’s paying a symbolic price.
X-Men #20 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 5 #20
“Lost Love”
by Jonathan Hickman, Francesco Mobili & Sunny Gho
COVER / PAGE 1: The face of a damaged Nimrod.
PAGE 2. “The Oracle”
This is Mystique’s underground home, which we last saw in issue #6. The floating mask with the energy effect, which we also saw in that issue, belongs to her late wife Destiny. As shown in that issue and Powers of X #6 (among others), Professor X and Magneto signed Mystique up for the Krakoan project on the promise that Destiny would be resurrected. But Destiny can’t be resurrected because of the rule against reviving precognitives: first, she would be able to detect Moira MacTaggert hiding on the island; and second, she would apparently see something pretty alarming about how things turned out. And so Professor X and Magneto have been stringing Mystique along.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 3
Lightning never strikes twice, but luckily for us it strikes three times, because we’re back with the third episode of our spinoff reread podcast covering Marvel’s most wanted, the Thunderbolts.
This time round, we’re covering Thunderbolts #5 and 6, and Thunderbolts ’97. The whole “these episodes should run 40-45 minutes” thing has completely gone by the wayside by this point. We’re pretty much resigned to these being an hour and twenty apiece at this stage.
As always, it should go without saying, but this episode contains spoilers for the issues under discussion (though we’ve tried to avoid flagging things that will be important in later issues too heavily).
The episode is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And look, the weather isn’t going to get any less unpredictable, so you might as well cut your losses and wear one of our snazzy t-shirts.
Charts – 21 May 2021
J Cole has an album out, then.
1. Tion Wayne & Russ Millions – “Body”
Three weeks, and still with a comfortable lead – it’s about 25% ahead of the number 2 single.
2. Olivia Rodrigo – “Good 4 U”
A final single from her album before its release today. She’s now released three singles complaining about her ex’s new girlfriend, but there’s certainly a range of genre – this time, she’s Paramore. “Deja Vu” climbs to a new peak of number 11 this week as well, and “Drivers Licence” is at number 35.
Way of X #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and the page numbers go by the digital edition.
WAY OF X #2
“Let Us Prey”
by Si Spurrier, Bob Quinn & Java Tartaglia
COVER / PAGE 1. The swashbuckling Nightcrawler in Kurt’s mindscape battle an attacking Kraken.
PAGE 2. David and Kurt.
Legion. The name “Legion” comes originally from New Mutants vol 1 #26-27, and used to be David’s codename. He started rejecting it in Spurrier’s X-Men Legacy vol 2. Strictly speaking, in the original story, “Legion” was a collective name for all of David’s multiple personalities.
The Patchwork Man. David is aware of the Patchwork Man, and evidently assumes that his father is jumping to conclusions in blaming him; he sees Xavier as completely distrustful and unsupportive, which is pretty much fair (and stands in stark contrast to his more paternal role with the rest of the X-Men).
Wolverine #12 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #12
“Penumbra”
by Benjamin Percy, Scot Eaton, JP Mayer & Matthew Wilson
COVER / PAGE 1. Dracula and the Vampire Nation hook themselves up to a captive Wolverine in order to get his blood. The image is upside down, so that the vampires look like bats.
PAGES 2-4. Logan and Louise in Paris.
All fairly straightforward in terms of plot. Louise wonders if fighting on against her vampirism is heroic or just hypocritical; Logan tells her to fight on. We have been here before with Wolverine, in X-Men Annual vol 1 #6, with Rachel van Helsing. She was a former vampire hunter turned into a vampire, and she asked Logan to kill her. That time, he did.
Penumbra. A more mundane definition would simply be that it’s an area of partial shadow. The bit at the edge of a shadow where it fades out instead of ending abruptly. But the point works as well.
“Those vampire kids…” Wolverine is referring to the vampire kids he met in issue #5, who were indeed successfully resisting Dracula’s control. Perhaps they’ve had an impact on his thinking, but in the next scene his main point is that all his own losses of control have only made him more determined to do the right thing – not simply take himself off the board.
X-Men: Curse of the Man-Thing #1
X-MEN: CURSE OF THE MAN-THING #1
“Curse of the Man-Thing, Chapters 7-9”
by Steve Orlando, Andrea Broccardo & Guru-eFX
So here’s one for the “technically an X-book” file.
X-Men: Curse of the Man-Thing #1 might sound like a one-shot, but it’s actually the final part of a three-issue miniseries. The other two chapters are Avengers: Curse of the Man-Thing #1 and Spider-Man: Curse of the Man-Thing #1. It’s what you might call an imaginative use of “#1”.
We’ve had this format once before, with a Typhoid miniseries. At root, it’s a tacit admission that Marvel would really like to do a story about Man-Thing, but that book obviously won’t sell at all, so maybe if we prop it up with guest stars it’ll work. Which is a bit of a shame for Man-Thing, as this is his supposed to be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his debut in Savage Tales #1. The poor bastard doesn’t even get top billing at his own birthday party.
Charts – 14 May 2021
This was the week of the Brit Awards, and since performing your song on primetime TV to an audience who don’t necessarily care all that much about music tends to bring in new listeners, there are a couple of unlikely rebounds further down the chart. But it makes no difference to…
1. Tion Wayne & Russ Millions – “Body”
…which gets a second week at number 1, and continues to grow. It has twice the streams of the number 2 single (which is “Montero”, a record on its way down). So it looks set to be here for a while.
12. Coldplay – “Higher Power”
Produced by Max Martin, and it sounds it. This is the lead single for their ninth album, somewhat bizarrely promoted with a video livestream from the International Space Station. Coldplay’s last hit single was “Orphans” in 2019, but they haven’t been this high up the chart since 2017 (when they got to number 2 in a collaboration with the Chainsmokers).
