A.X.E.: Judgment Day #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #5
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Colour artist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER / PAGE 1. The Avengers, the X-Men and the Eternals in the shadow of the Progenitor.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. To be honest, there’s not much annotation called for in this issue, since we’re deep into the story.
PAGE 4. The Progenitor renders its judgment.
And the characters who were already at the North Pole flee.
PAGE 5. The civilians react to the judgment.
Recall that last issue, Daniela and Jada passed, Tom and Katrina failed, and the Progenitor declined to judge either Komali or Kenta. Both Tom and Katrina appear to react to the judgment by developing the self-awareness that they were previously lacking, and that caused them to fail. Kenta is more explicitly rated by the Progenitor as a blameless innocent. Komali appears to be simply waiting to die so that she can be reunited with her late husband.
Wolverine: Journey of Time #1
WOLVERINE: JOURNEY OF TIME #1
Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Marco Itri
Colourist: Valentina Taddeo
Letterer: Joe Sabrino
Now this – this is completist territory. It appeared on Marvel Unlimited this week, with a listed publication date of 15 August 2022, but as best as I can tell, the only physical edition is a giveaway available exclusively from Moto Guzzi dealerships. They’re an Italian motorcycle manufacturer, and their logo is on the cover. So is their bike. There is no credited editor, although there is a credit for the “project manager”, the “partnerships co-ordinator” and the “Director, Customs Solutions”. So you know it’s going to be class.
Still… let’s not jump to conclusions, right? Jody Houser is a proper writer, after all.
Jody Houser is also a professional. Jody Houser knows the remit and Jody Houser is going to deliver on the remit and Jody Houser is going to cash the cheque because Jody Houser has bills to pay. Logan has seen The Bike on page 1 and he has voiced his approval of The Bike by the start of page 2. The client is happy. This is good. After all, nobody else but me and the creative team will ever read this.
There’s a fight a few pages later. We never actually find out why there’s a fight. I suppose they might be trying to steal The Bike but it’s just a Moto Guzzi V100 Mandello S. You can buy one for £16K, which has to be cheaper than hiring a bunch of criminals. So maybe there’s just a fight, for reasons that aren’t important. One of the bad guys either steals The Bike or tries to escape on The Bike and that’s what matters. Bullseye shows up for two pages, which is nice of him. He needs a better agent. The art is perfectly acceptable. The Bike looks good. We’re all impressed.
X-Men & Moon Girl #1
X-MEN & MOON GIRL #1
Writer: Mohale Mashigo
Pencillers: David Cutler & Marika Cresta
Inkers: José Marzan Jr & Marika Cresta
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Lauren Bisom
From the “technically an X-book but only barely” file comes this one-shot which, as so often, isn’t a one-shot. It’s the final issue of a three-part miniseries, the other parts being Miles Morales & Moon Girl #1 and Avengers & Moon Girl #1. Once again, Amazon has quite sensibly listed the whole thing as a miniseries called Moon Girl Team-Up, but officially, that’s not the name. Officially, this is three one-shots and they’re all #1.
So that’s irritating me before I’ve even started reading it.
Anyway. The High Evolutionary has stolen Devil Dinosaur and plans to clone it. He’s also obtained a sample of Wolverine’s blood so that he can use its healing factor to stabilise the clones. I don’t remember this ever being an issue for the High Evolutionary in his many years of vigorous cloning, but sure, let’s go with that. In this issue, Moon Girl, Havok and Wolverine head to Counter-Earth to fight the bad guy. Yes, just those two. And again, sure, okay. It’s Moon Girl’s book and you don’t want her being vastly outnumbered. Besides, using Havok avoids just retreading the usual schtick of “wide-eyed pre-teen hero teams with grumpy old Wolverine.”
Charts – 16 September 2022
Behold, the first new number 1 of the reign of His Majesty King Charles III.
1. Lewis Capaldi – “Forget Me”
We haven’t heard from Lewis Capaldi since before the pandemic; he had two number 1 hits and a total of five top 10 hits in 2018-19, plus an album that spent ten weeks at number 1 and 168 weeks in the top 40 (it rebounds to 9 this week). So a strong debut for his comeback single is not a surprise. The record itself is unrelentingly middling. The blandly retro arrangement does it no favours. The video is meant to be a homage to Wham!’s “Club Tropicana”, which was nearly 40 years ago, so who knows how many people get the reference today. It was number 1 by a pretty tight margin, pushed over the edge by first-week physical sales pre-ordered by the fanbase. But you never know. It could grow – his previous hits all took a while to reach their peak.
A.X.E.: Judgment Day #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
A.X.E.: JUDGMENT DAY #4
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Valerio Schiti
Colour artist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER / PAGE 1. Various characters look alarmed as the Progenitor poses with thumb poised.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-5. Captain America tries to calm the crowd at the Treehouse.
The Progenitor’s narration here seems to confirm that everyone is being judged by their own standards, something which becomes even clearer as the issue goes on. (“They must decide what ‘hero’ means… He needs to believe the world is fundamentally a good place… The world may think differently.”)
“He failed his test…” Last issue. Of course, since Captain America is fundamentally modest, and aware of the gap between his values and reality, he’s going to judge himself as a failure. Clearly, he’s having little or no impact on this crowd.
PAGE 6. The Avengers Mountain cast make plans.
Left to right in page 6 panel 2, that’s Ajak, Iron Man, Sersi, Starfox, Makkari, Mr Sinister and Phastos.
X-Men Red #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #6
“The Hour of Magneto”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer & Production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Magneto’s broken helmet in the foreground, while Storm fights in the background.
PAGE 2. Data page. A transcript of Craig Marshall’s field recording, which continues into the following scene. As far as I know, he’s a new character. He’s also the first indication we’ve had that ordinary humans are welcome to explore Arakko beyond the Diplomatic Zone, if they’re actually able to get to Mars in the first place. (This being the Marvel Universe, it seems to be just taken for granted that NASA has access to technology that can reach the Moon – it’s possible that he got a lift to Phobos from Feilong, of course.)
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 11
The Thunderbolts are back, and Graviton is making heavy weather of things for them. Can Archangel tip the scales in the heroes’ favour? Can you imagine how embarrassed he would be if he didn’t? We’re looking at issues 27-30 of Thunderbolts (1997) this time out, and there’s a guy with too many baguettes, some highly unfortunate kerning, and a high society scandal in the world of military robotics to deal with.
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Charts – 9 September 2022
The regular Radio 1 chart show didn’t air on Friday for the obvious reason, but the charts were published as usual.
1. Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal – “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)”
Two weeks. The main challenger this week is David Guetta featuring Bebe Rexha’s “I’m Good (Blue)” at number 2, although the midweeks have a new Lewis Capaldi single entering at number one. We’ll see if that holds up – records that enter really high tend to be fanbase records, and fanbase records have front-loaded sales.
20. Tom Odell – “Another Love”
New Mutants #29 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #29
“Fights and Feelings”
Writer: Danny Lore
Artist: Guillermo Sanna
Colourist: Dan Brown
Letterer & production: Travis Lanham
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Warpath and Akihiro (as we’re calling him in this story) fight, with a looming villain in the background. The cover strapline is not what happens in the story, though it is Akihiro’s perspective at the start of the story.
This issue has a guest creative team, which means it’s what we used to call a fill-in issue back in the day.
PAGES 2-4. Akihiro attacks Warpath.
Akihiro is normally referred to as Daken, but his real name Akihiro is used throughout this issue, including on the recap page. Over in this week’s Marauders, he seems to be dumping the Daken name.
Akihiro is upset that his younger sister Scout is missing, and blames the New Mutants for reasons we’ll get to. Quite why that leads him to attack Warpath without explaining himself isn’t clear, nor is it really behaviour that’s consistent with the way he’s written in his home book Marauders. (Strictly speaking, Scout is a clone of X-23, who in turn is the lab-grown genetic daughter of Akihiro’s father Wolverine. But he and Scout – and X-23 – have treated each other as family for years now.)
Wolverine #24 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #24
“Hell to Pay”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights a pack of hellhound things with glowing eyes. The Hellbride has one of them later in the issue.
PAGES 2-4. The Progenitor challenges Wolverine to prove that his value is greater than the value of the people he killed.
The Progenitor. This is an A.X.E. tie-in, and the Progenitor is busily judging everyone on the planet. Like most people, Wolverine is confronted by the Progenitor in the form of people to whom he feels the need to justify himself. In Wolverine’s case, that’s obviously going to be all the people he’s killed over the years, since it’s practically a trope of the character anyway. The novel point is about him having to positively justify himself.
