Charts – 31 March 2023
Nothing if not predictable…
1. Ed Sheeran – “Eyes Closed”
This is the lead single from his next album, predictably entitled “-” (or “Subtract”, if you must insist on saying it out loud). It’s an Ed Sheeran ballad single in the fairly well established mould. It is worth saying that it only reached number 1 thanks to first-week sales of the fan-marketed CD single, which is obviously a one-off – but that doesn’t mean it won’t gain in actual streaming next time round. Sheeran tracks tend to have staying power.
It’s his fourteenth number one single, which is the joint third highest total for any artist – the Beatles had 17, and Elvis Presley had 21. Sheeran is now tied with, um, Cliff Richard and Westlife. It seems inevitable that he’ll beat them, and I’d give him a strong chance of overtaking the Beatles.
“Flowers” by Miley Cyrus drops to number 2 after ten straight weeks at number 1, and most of the top 10 is uneventful. However…
The Incomplete Wolverine – 2011
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009
2010
It’s 2011, we’re still in the Utopian era, and we’re midway through the “Wolverine Goes To Hell” storyline. The first arc in that storyline already took us through to January 2011. When we left off, Wolverine had just been summoned back to his body, which was still occupied by demons.
Oh, and brace yourselves, because this is an insanely busy year.
WOLVERINE vol 4 #6-8
“Wolverine vs the X-Men”
by Jason Aaron & Daniel Acuña
February to April 2011
While his possessed body fights the X-Men, Wolverine fights the (literal) demons inside his mind, who are “razing” parts of his personality to make room for themselves – something that seems to have no impact whatsoever in later stories, so evidently they don’t do that much damage.
Wolverine defeats the demons with help of Emma Frost, a “Phoenix” who appears to be part of his subconscious, and a ghost of Nightcrawler who’s strongly implied to be genuine. Basically, Logan can purge the demons if he finally lets Jean Grey go – and he does, but only so he can take revenge on the people who banished him to Hell. He regains control of his body just as Cyclops was about to kill him (on the logic that it’s probably what Wolverine would have wanted).
This is really an extended fight scene. It comes across as an oddly extended coda to the main event in the previous arc, but it’s quite fun on its own terms.
Sabretooth & The Exiles #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
SABRETOOTH & THE EXILES #5
“Station Five”
Writer: Victor LaValle
Artist: Leonard Kirk
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Sabretooth fights alt-Sabretooths. There aren’t many established alt-Sabretooths who are particularly noteworthy or recognisable beyond one-off What If stories, but that’s the Age of Apocalypse Sabretooth with his back to us in the foreground. (He’s been dead since 2013, though, which is why he’s not in this arc.) The one on the right is simply another Sabretooth in traditional costume. On the left we have someone who certainly looks like he ought to be recognisable, but nobody’s coming to mind. The guy lying unconscious on the ground is just a Sabretooth in a suit, an outfit which he sometimes shows up in for Wolverine stories, particularly in the Hama years.
Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #2
“Two Captains, One Country”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Vasco Georgiev
Colourist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Captain Britain and Captain Carter fight the Furies.
PAGES 2-4. The Captain Britain Corps repel Morgan Le Fey and her Furies.
This continues directly from the end of issue #1. Basically, Morgan’s plan is to find her own, more pliable Captain Britain and use her as a vehicle to promote her own vision of Britain. Last issue, she tried recruiting Captain Pretani of Earth-5411 who, being a member of the Captain Britain Corps, had no interest whatsoever.
Morgan presumably retreats, not because the Furies aren’t capable of doing serious damage to the Corps – they evidently are – but because this fight isn’t achieving her wider goal, which is to find a stooge. We’ll see later that the Furies are unimpressed by her priorities.
Charts – 24 March 2023
Well, there’s still not much going on at the top end of the chart.
That’s ten weeks, which matches the run of Harry Styles’ “As It Was” last year. The next target is Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits”, which lasted eleven weeks in 2021. But since Sheeran has his own single out this week, I don’t fancy Miley’s chances there.
10. Metro Boomin with the Weeknd & 21 Savage – “Creepin'”
This isn’t technically a new entry – the track has been around since December, it’s already had five weeks in the top 10, and it’s climbing from number 33. The reason for the climb is the remix with P Diddy, but since it’s not the lead version of the track, he doesn’t get a chart credit. Hence, it remains the case that he hasn’t had a hit single since 2011. Diddy was also on Mario Winans’ “I Don’t Wanna Know”, which “Creepin'” is essentially a cover of.
Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM & THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #2
“Sins of Sinister, part 7: No Hope”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Andrea Di Vito
Colourists: Jim Charalampidis & Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A very elderly Storm, holding a miniature Destiny in an energy ball reminiscent of Orbis Stellaris’ sphere. Make of that what you will.
PAGE 2. Data page. The mock-3D effect was also used on the data pages in the previous issue; this one seems to be echoing Star Wars.
The Interstellar Compact. The Compact was mentioned by Hope in Immoral X-Men #2, where it was described as simply an alliance of alien races which the mutants were cheerfully destroying. Hope’s account suggested it was on its last legs. The information that Orbis Stellaris is behind it is new, I think.
Planet Arakko was destroyed in Sins of Sinister #1.
Varon appears to be new, as far as I can see.
Freedom Force were mentioned in a data page in Immoral X-Men #2: “We still can’t get ahold of Storm, but I hear we cornered Freedom Force. We finally got Mystique, the little traitor.” Originally, Freedom Force was the name used by Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants when they worked for the US government in the late 1980s; the name was ironic there, but it’s played (more) straight here.
Marauders #12 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS vol 2 #12
“Pre-Genesis, part 2”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Kate with the Mysterium box.
This is the final issue of Marauders vol 2, and it’s very obviously a “wrap up the storylines” issue, particularly with the B and C plots. The A plot feels more like it was meant to get to this point around now anyway.
PAGE 2. Fang fights Brimstone Love in Madripoor.
This picks up from the cliffhanger of the previous issue, in which Fang tracked down Brimstone Love to take revenge for his torture in Annual #1. He was accompanied by Lockheed and, rather arbitrarily, Johnny Dee – who hasn’t appeared in this book before and seems a weird character to throw in at the last minute, though at least his highly specific powers are important to the plot here. As in earlier appearances, Johnny Dee maintains that the creature in his chest has a mind of its own.
PAGE 3. Recap and credits.
PAGE 4. Polaris creates the Seed.
Picking up from the A-plot of the previous issue, this is Polaris using the genetic source material of Genosha to fill the mysterium box that will go back in time to create Threshold, and then (much, much later) make its way into Kate’s hands at the start of the Orlando run. The Seed, and the fact that it was Kate’s box, were both established in issue #9.
Charts – 17 March 2023
So, this was to be expected.
That’s nine weeks. More to the point, the parent album “Endless Summer Vacation” is out this week, and enters the album chart at number 1. It’s her second number one album, but the other one was 2013’s “Bangerz”; that was followed by a 2017 album that missed the top 5, and a 2019 album that only just made the top 20. 2020’s “Plastic Hearts” was a big improvement, getting to number 4, and Miley seems to have hit on what works for her at this point in her career. The sales on the album itself are nothing out of the ordinary, but that’s hardly a concern.
Nine weeks at number 1 on the singles chart beats LF System’s “Afraid To Feel”, but she still needs one more week in order to match Harry Styles’ “As It Was” from last year. Tracks can become subject to the downweighting rule in their tenth week, but only if they’re several weeks past their peak – since streams went up this week, that won’t happen to “Flowers” for a few weeks yet, and so she has a good chance of lasting to week ten. (Week eleven will be more of a challenge, because Ed Sheeran will have a new track out.)
3. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
Very much a 90s trance throwback, this. Ellie Goulding has released two previous top ten singles with Calvin Harris, but that was in 2013 and 2014. Number 3 makes this Calvin Harris’ biggest hit since “Giant” in 2019.
Wolverine #31 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #31
“Weapons of X, part 1”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colourist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights a whole team of Beasts. This doesn’t happen in this issue, but it’s clearly coming later in the storyline. (For whatever reason, the surprise ending of this issue is not only given away on the cover, it was in the solicitation copy.)
PAGES 2-5. Beast brings the Pointe to life and heads off into the sea.
Last issue, Wolverine killed the Beast in revenge for Beast turning him into a weapon. Beast was automatically resurrected as a clone in X-Force HQ from an “auto-backup”. The obvious question is how this fits with the idea that the Five are… well, necessary. In fairness, though, the Five aren’t involved in the process of restoring memories, and we saw in X-Force #37 that that bit can be done by a machine if need be. So maybe Beast got the Five to create these bodies for him – in defiance of the normal rules against multiple resurrections – and has them all stored in the Pointe, but he can’t make any more. The other possibility is that this Beast isn’t truly a resurrection, but just a regular old clone.
Immoral X-Men #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORAL X-MEN #2
“Sins of Sinister, part 6: Four-Letter Words”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Andrea Di Vito
Colourist: Jim Charalampidis
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Rasputin fights Mystiques.
PAGE 2. Hope and Exodus prepares to attack the Compact.
“+100, the Edge of the Pax.” The structure of the “Sins of Sinister” crossover is that the month 1 chapters all took place around 10 years after the save point, these chapters take place 100 years after, and next month will be 1000 years. Hope and Exodus are still around thanks to resurrection, as clarifies later on.
Presumably the Pax is the ironic name for the Sinisterised Earth empire, since the alliance of alien races is apparently “the Compact”.We saw in Nightcrawlers #2 that the Quiet Council had gone on the offensive against the rest of the galaxy, prompted (at least initially) by Hope’s concerns last issue that otherwise they would be wiped out themselves.
The Supreme Intelligence is the traditional ruler of the Kree.
