Mr & Mrs X #7-10: “Gambit & Rogue Forever”
While most of the X-books are quite literally off in their own little world (and boy, that’s going to be a lot of storylines all finishing at once in a couple of months…), we still have secondary titles continuing as usual. So here are four issues of Rogue and Gambit in the Mojoverse.
Mojo’s not an obvious choice of villain for these two. Yes, he’s an X-Men bad guy, but he doesn’t have any more specific link to these two, and like Arcade, he’s the sort of wacky novelty villain who can wear thin rather quickly. So it’s probably for the best that writer Kelly Thompson only devotes an issue and a half to traditional Mojo hijinks before moving on to something with a bit more substance.
Charts – 19 April 2019
It turns out that Lewis Capaldi is not, in fact, “going to be here forever”, whatever I may have said last week.
1. Lil Nas X – “Old Town Road”
After last week’s 39-2 climb, this probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but Lewis Capaldi’s seven-week run comes to an end with this rap/country viral hit. There’s clearly a novelty factor at work here, but you can’t really file “Old Town Road” as a novelty record in the traditional sense; it’s played fairly straight, and at most it’s a whimsical fragment, not a comedy song. And I’ve said this before, but yes, that is the official video. Well, it’s a “Visualizer” – but it is indeed what you get if you go to his own YouTube channel. Despite what some people will tell you, this doesn’t technically give Billy Ray Cyrus his first UK number one (“Achy Breaky Heart” was a number 3), because as far as the chart is concerned, he’s not on the lead version of the track, so he doesn’t get credited.
Charts – 12 April 2019
This is going to be here forever, isn’t it?
1. Lewis Capaldi – “Someone You Loved”
That’s seven weeks, and more to the point, it’s still gaining both sales and streams. Seven weeks overtakes “Thank U Next”, so the next marker is the eight-week run of Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa’s “One Kiss” just under a year ago. The previous single “Grace” rebounds to 27 this week; it’s been hovering between 21 and 30 for nine weeks now.
Rather more interesting for our purposes is “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X, which leaps 39-2 as it seems to have gone suddenly viral in the UK. The remix with added Billy Ray Cyrus has undoubtedly got it a bit of attention, but it’s not as if he’s some sort of reliable chart presence in the UK – he hasn’t had a top 40 hit since the follow-up to “Achy Breaky Heart” back in 1992. And technically he still hasn’t, because the remix hasn’t been nominated as the lead version, so the official chart credit still goes just to Lil Nas X.
5. Meduza featuring Goodboys – “Piece of Your Heart”
House to Astonish Episode 173
A little bit of a gap between our last episode and this, but it turns out it’s been a relatively fallow news period in any event. We’re remembering Mark Alessi, talking about Jai Nitz, chewing over the announcements of House of X and Powers of X, the new Death’s Head series, Erik Larsen’s return to Marvel, and DC’s Wal-Mart giant-size books being repackaged for the Direct Market. We’ve also got reviews of Marvel Team-Up and Section Zero, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe wants to give you its digits. All this plus a dog called Hickman, the crumpets of comics and an impromptu tribute to Harry Belafonte.
The podcast 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 hey, if you want to buy a t-shirt, don’t let us stop you (and if you would buy a hoodie… let us know?).
Charts – 5 April 2019
Charts – 29 March 2019
This is starting to get a little bit repetitive.
1. Lewis Capaldi – “Someone You Loved”
Five weeks. That’s the longest we’ve had since “Thank U Next” in the run-up to Christmas. Poor “Giant” by Calvin Harris and Rag’N’Bone Man has been stuck behind it the whole time. “Just You and I” by Tom Walker climbs 4-3, and “Sucker” by the Jonas Brothers goes 5-4. “Location” by Dave featuring Burna Boy has now moved 11-8-6, which is odd, since it’s not the official single – that’s “Streatham”, which falls to 22 (while “Disaster” falls to 15).
7. Steel Banglez featuring AJ Tracey & MoStack – “Fashion Week”
X-23 #7-10: “X-Assassin”
X-23 is always going to lend itself to stories about identity. You’ve got Laura herself, the emotionally scarred hero grown and raised in the lab, and then you’ve got her clone Gabby, who’s literally a younger version of the same character, but diverted at an earlier stage and inappropriately gleeful. The nature versus nurture thing is kind of built in, and it comes up a lot.
And here’s another one. Mariko Tamaki and Diego Olortegui’s “X-Assassin” sees our heroes capture a mysterious assassin who turns out to be another clone, except a mute, seemingly soulless one.
Charts – 22 March 2019
There’s some sea shanties further down, if you like that.
1. Lewis Capaldi – “Someone You Loved”
Four weeks, and his streams are still growing, so we could be here a while. The top three is static, and “Just You And I” by Tom Walker climbs 10-4. That overtakes last year’s “Leave a Light On” to be his biggest hit. (Well, bigger. He’s only had two.) “Sucker” by the Jonas Brothers rebounds to a new peak of 5, and “Location” by Dave featuring Burna Boy climbs 11-8. The other two tracks that charted from the album drop to 10 and 13, but it’s still pretty impressive to place three tracks so high, two weeks running. Sigrid’s “Don’t Feel Like Crying” climbs 20-15… oh, hold on, that’s got a video now.
15. Sigrid – “Don’t Feel Like Crying”
X-Force #1-4: “Sins of the Past”
The latest relaunch of X-Force seems suspiciously like a last-minute decision, considering that Weapon X was already covering very much the same territory, and got cut very abruptly short. But this iteration, which spins out of the Extermination miniseries, is unexpectedly strong.
Some versions of X-Force have been ponderously gritty, and this one is certainly happy enough for them to be the paramilitary wing of the X-Men again. But the overall style of the thing strikes a much more appealing tone. A lot of that is due to Dylan Burnett’s art (and Jesus Aburtov’s colouring), which gives the book an appealingly loose, cartooning feel. The exaggeration takes the edge off some of the grimmer bits, but at the same time it brings a lot of personality to the characters. I always like art that doesn’t try to make Cannonball look traditionally heroic, but this story even manages to bring some life to Ahab, patiently trying to explain a slightly saner version of anti-mutant hatred to the raving lunatics that he’s currently aligned with.
Uncanny X-Men: Winter’s End
So here’s a new angle in curious labelling. Uncanny X-Men: Winter’s End may be billed as an X-Men special, but it’s actually the final issue of Sina Grace’s Iceman.
Now, this certainly isn’t false advertising, or anything like that. Iceman is in the X-Men too. And there’s a long history of unresolved plots from cancelled books being dutifully wound up in other titles, at least back in the days when people bothered to do such things as wrap up the unresolved plots from cancelled books. But there’s no getting away from the fact that this is an issue of Iceman – the main story will make sense if you haven’t read that book, but there are subplots that really won’t. So you have to suspect that this has been bannered as an X-Men story in the hope that it’ll sell a few extra copies. (You probably wouldn’t guess that it was an Iceman story from the cover, either, which is a bit of a giveaway.)
