Charts – 29 August 2025
You know, I’m starting to wonder if the chart show needs to be moved to Radio 2.
Not for this, obviously. “Golden” gets its fourth week at number 1, with a 50% margin over Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” at number 2. The two Saja Boys tracks are at 4 and 6 – neither is climbing on the chart, but both are up in streams. There are also three Olivia Dean tracks in the top 10, with “Nice to Each Other” at 7 and her guest appearance on Sam Fender’s “Rein Me In” at 10. It’s… not the most diverse top 10 you’ve ever heard.
13. Doja Cat – “Jealous Type”
Well, that’s the sort of video that makes Tate McRae looks subtle, isn’t it? It’s the lead single from her fifth album and it’s a rather good 80s throwback dance track. It’s been a couple of years since we had her in the top 40 as a lead artist; the lead single from her last album was “Paint the Town Red”, which was a five-week number one. But it entered lower than this, so I wouldn’t bet against her climbing further.
The X-Axis – w/c 25 August 2025
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #34. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. One thing I like about this book is its enthusiasm for remarkably low-key real-world settings. We’ve had an influencer convention, we’ve had the Outer Hebrides (kind of), and now we’ve got an English seaside town with a community of retired spies. It’s not even going for Portmeirion, it’s going for cosy crime. That said, does the plot here actually make sense? The idea is that we’re meant to buy into the idea that the break-ins were committed by the Changeling in his villain personality, and Banshee certainly does, but… um, when? Because he was in America when the regular cast found him, and then he was in Ireland, and then the break-ins were already in the news, so… when do people think he sneaked off to Somerset to do some light burglary? Still, it’s a nice looking book and I do appreciate that it’s doing something different.
X-MEN #21. (Annotations here.) With “Age of Revelation” approaching, I assume that X-Men is currently engaged in a bit of deck-clearing and a bit of set-up for the upcoming story. Specifically, if this is going to be an alternate future story, then I suspect it needs Jen Starkey to be heading in the right direction before we jump there. And so this is a sequel to issue #4, where Jen and some of the X-Men go back to Detroit and dispose of the eminently expendable Upstarts. Actually, the Upstarts put up a reasonable fight here, despite being made up mostly of bit-part characters from X-Statix – but they do have sensibly useful powers, so sure, I’ll buy that the X-Men can underestimate them and that Jen gets to have her moment as a result. I’m less convinced about Juggernaut killing Ocelot – yes, logically you can argue that he’s been involved in previous schemes where he seemed pretty relaxed about a body count, but that was a long time ago, some of it’s been attributed to the influence of Cyttorak, and besides, he was never a Wolverine or a Sabretooth. I know it’s meant to be a shock, but it doesn’t convince me. Still, good work here from Netho Diaz, who gives us a decently worked-out action scene and really sells Jen snapping.
Phoenix #14 annotations
PHOENIX #14
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
COVER: A symbolic image of Jean and Sara.
PAGES 2-4. Sara and the In-Betweener.
Last issue, we established that Sara was not in fact Jean’s real sister, but rather had been inadvertently created in issue #10 from Jean’s memories of Sara. According to Cable, Sara’s continued existence somehow guaranteed a future timeline which was a zombie wasteland, though quite why wasn’t explained. The final scene of that issue saw Sara and her followers Vex, Kel and Rho trying to follow Jean and Cable, and winding up in the right place but in the present day. The issue ended with the In-Betweener appearing, making the same claim that Sara leads to a ruinous future, and calling her “the one between reality and imagination”.
This scene picks up from that cliffhanger, though Sara’s followers are nowhere to be seen (and aren’t mentioned anywhere in the issue). The In-Betweener has evidently taken her somewhere else, and we learn later that it’s the White Hot Room. The background is broadly the same as in the WHR scene in issue #11.
X-Men #21 annotations
X-MEN vol 7 #21
“Upstarts II”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inkers: Sean Parsons with JP Mayer & Livesay
Colourist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: The X-Men fight the Upstarts.
This issue is a sequel to issue #4 (“Upstarts”), hence the title.
PAGES 1-5. Jen talks with Kid Omega.
Jen Starkey. She debuted in issue #4 when the X-Men rescued her from the Upstarts. She claims here that she was lonely and miserable in Detroit prior to being attached – she stops short of saying that she was actively suicidal, but says she considered just letting the Upstarts kill her. She seems to think that no one will have missed her, and seems slightly surprised that nobody wondered why she had just left her life behind. (From the X-Men’s point of view, of course, this is just a genre convention. The same question didn’t arise with Ben Liu, recruited in issue #2, because they faked his death to stop people being afraid of his powers.)
Charts – 22 August 2025
In which KPop Demon Hunters continues to be the main story.
1. HUNTR/X, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami & the KPop Demon Hunters Cast – “Golden”
Three weeks total, and growing – it has a commanding lead over “No Broke Boys” at number 2, so it could be here for a while. Thanks to a quirk of chart rules, there are now five tracks from the soundtrack album in the top 40, with “Soda Pop” at 3, “Your Idol” at 6, and two tracks by Twice which aren’t caught by the three-song rule because they aren’t exclusive to the soundtrack. We’ll come to them. With Blackpink at number 22 and Rosé at 37, that’s seven tracks on the chart this week by South Korean artists – well, six and a half, depending on how you feel about Bruno Mars.
8. Olivia Dean – “Man I Need”
38. Olivia Dean – “Lady Lady”
Well,certainly a good week for Olivia Dean. She also has “Nice to Each Other” rebounding to a new peak of number 9, and has a featuring credit on Sam Fender’s “Rein Me In” at number 11 (which doesn’t count towards her three songs). Normally this sort of thing means that the album is out but… no, her second album isn’t out to September. It’s just that the pre-release singles have really got some momentum behind them.
The X-Axis – w/c 18 August 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #33. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. Okay, so the idea here is that the Changeling has a split personality, and (at least as Morph) doesn’t realise that he’s pursuing himself around America. That’s kind of the Sentry’s gimmick, but if it’s a way of transitioning Changeling into an Earth-616 Morph – and having access to that character without complicated alternate reality stuff – then I can see the attraction. Audino does a nicely baffled Morph, though it’s a slightly odd call to keep the character mostly off panel this issue and have Sean and Angelo relay to us what he’s like instead. Still, it’s all very readable.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #12. (Annotations here.) Much of this issue is about getting Reggie into the cast as another mutant – and boy, you can’t accuse the book of rushing that storyline after debuting him back in issue #4 – though it looks like he’s being kept on the sidelines until now. The storyline, though, is basically an excuse to send Axo, Melée and Bronze back in time so that they (and present-day Kitty) can meet pre-X-Men teenage Kitty. Presumably this is the pay off for Kitty’s regular laments about how she shouldn’t have been a teenage hero, as well as a way of advancing her relationship with the kids.
Psylocke #10 annotations
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #10
“Unmoored and Unmourned”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
COVER: Psylocke, possessed by the Lady in White.
This is the final issue of the series.
PAGES 1-2. Kwannon dreams of meeting the Lady in White.
The previous issue ended with Kwannon being possessed by the Lady in White after rejecting Mitsuki’s offer of an alliance to take over the Hand. In that issue, Mitsuki described the Lady in White as a yokai who “cares for the lost dead, especially lost children, and avenges them by tormenting their abusers until they lose their minds”. According to Mitsuki, the Lady saw Kwannon as one of the guilty, but Mitsuki used her powers to force the Lady to lure Kwannon to Japan as a potential ally instead. The Lady’s own comments about Psylocke earlier in the arc broadly confirmed that.
In this dream, however, Kwannon appears as a child, accompanied by a non-speaking Mitsuki. The scene broadly echoes flashbacks from issues #7 and #8, earlier in the arc. This version of Kwannon – a victim of the Hand – is obviously one much more likely to be viewed sympathetically by the Lady, and indeed that’s how the Lady treats her here (though she turns on her in their next scene). As in issue #6, the Lady gives Kwannon a vision of her lost child Hideko, but this time it’s in the context of inviting Kwannon to accept the Lady as a mother figure.
Wolverine #12 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #12
“Mother and Master”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colourist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: Wolverine defends his mother. Despite what it says on the cover, Elizabeth Howlett isn’t really in this issue.
PAGES 1-2. Logan gets his “mother” to the car.
We established last issue that the whole scenario of Wolverine’s mother asking him for help had been contrived by Mastermind. That still left open the question of whether any part of it was true, but it looks from this issue as if the answer is basically “no”.
In Wolverine’s mind, he’s just rescued his mother from Sabretooth, and wants to get away before Sabretooth recovers. The whole thing is a little dreamlike, with Sabretooth simply vanishing, and no terribly clear explanation of how Elizabeth supposedly got a chance to write the letter asking Wolverine for help in the first place.
Exceptional X-Men #12 annotations
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #12
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Federica Mancin
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER. Kitty and the kids get sucked through a wormhole; this doesn’t exactly happen in the issue, but close enough.
PAGE 1. Reggie panics about Kitty’s disappearance.
This picks up directly from last issue’s cliffhanger, when Kitty vanished into one of the portals in the park. The passers-by were also in the final panel of the last issue, where at least some of them seemed to be reacting with surprise, but here Reggie seems to be the only one who’s noticed (or at least the only one who cared).
Last issue, Reggie was preoccupied thinking about how to text Trista, and it seemed to be just coincidence that he was around when the portals opened. This issue explains that he’s a mutant too and that they’re created by his mutant power. Ironheart’s AI, NATALIE, told us last issue that the portal has “a precise set of emotional signatures bound up with its temporal emissions” and “will draw in people who are temporally sensitive or people with a connection to it”. Kitty was presumably drawn to it simply because of her experience of such weirdness as a member of the X-Men.
House to Astonish Episode 214
A small but perfectly formed episode for you this time round, with news about Die: Loaded, the new Infernal Hulk and Doctor Strange, DC’s upcoming Batman/Static: Beyond and the announcements of the murderers’ row of creators working on Batman/Deadpool. We’ve also got reviews of Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum and Uncle Scrooge: Earth’s Mightiest Duck and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a bit of both. All this plus the Thing’s ’92 Subaru, Green Lantern’s trick or treating habits and the Wuzzels revival.
The episode is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, via email, and if you want something from our Redbubble store I would get in there quick because it’s going away soon, to be replaced by something hopefully better.
