X-Men Gold Annual #2: “Into the Woods”
Given the volume of X-books that Marvel puts out, it’s not always clear why they do annuals as well. The X-Men Blue annual this year was really just an extra issue of the regular title. X-Men Gold takes the more sensible route, with the sort of off-to-the-side story that wouldn’t stretch to a mini, but might once have appeared in X-Men Unlimited.
I think this is the first comics work by Seanan McGuire, a prolific fantasy novelist with some award winning material to her credit. It’s a solo story for a teenage Kitty Pryde, as she takes a few weeks off from the X-Men to go to summer camp.
Exiles #1-5
It’s been a few years since the last run of Exiles, a book which is essentially What If…?‘s parade of alternate Marvel Universes crossed with Quantum Leap‘s uncontrolled dimension-hopping. Time for another go around, this time with Saladin Ahmed and Javier Rodríguez.
And… does Exiles actually count as an X-book? The original Exiles series was clearly an X-book, populated mostly by variants of X-Men characters. Here, we’ve got Blink, a version of Wolverine, and that’s pretty much your lot, X-wise. There’s still a prominent X in the logo, but I’m minded to treat this as a spin-off that’s gone its own way, like Deadpool. (We miss you, Deadpool. Send money.) But hey, we’re here now.
Charts – 27 July 2018
Look, we need dull weeks so that the slightly less dull weeks can seem interesting in comparison.
1. Drake – “In My Feelings”
Two weeks, still no video. The album “Scorpion” drops to 3 this week as it yields to a far, far greater force, but more of that later. As for the other two Drake singles, “Don’t Matter To Me” drops to 7, and “Nonstop” falls to 22. There could well be others that would qualify for the top 40 if it wasn’t for the three-song cap.
26. Loud Luxury featuring Brando – “Body”
X-Men: Wakanda Forever #1: “Echo Chamber”
You want comprehensive, I’ll give you comprehensive. This is actually the middle chapter in a three-part miniseries about the Dora Milaje. I haven’t read the first chapter, and I don’t plan to do so, at least until it shows up on Marvel Unlimited in five months time. So reviewing it in isolation might seem pointless and futile…
…except that it is being promoted as a “one-shot”, it does have issue #1 on the cover, and if you’re going to (mis)promote a comic that way, you can’t really complain when people take you up on the offer. To be fair, it does also say “The second part of a new Dora Milaje adventure”, and the “Wakanda Forever” logo is more prominent than the “X-Men”. But still, the whole point of this sort of needlessly confusing numbering is to get people to treat it as a one-shot instead of a middle chapter, so let’s do that.
X-Men Gold #31-32: “Prestige Dark”
As titles go, “Prestige Dark” is… not good. It conjures up images of inexpensive aftershave, or perhaps pretentious late-night soft porn on obscure channels on the third screen of the Entertainment section. The main hits on Google are for laminate flooring and rum. None of these connotations seem likely to be intentional.
For a while now, Marc Guggenheim has been building a subplot about Mesmero tinkering with Rachel’s mind. This is where it comes to a head, but not in an especially satisfying way.
X-Men Blue #29-30: “The Search for Jimmy Hudson”
Continuing my catch-up efforts – X-Men Blue is already up to issue #32 – we have this bizarre little two-parter from Cullen Bunn and Nathan Stockman. You may recall that we just did an arc with a fill-in team so that the regular cast could go off and appear in the Venomized miniseries.
X-Men Blue doesn’t really bother to explain what happened in those issues, beyond the fact that Jean Grey is alive and well, something that is unlikely to come as a tremendous shock. But Jimmy Hudson, who wasn’t in the set-up issues at all, is apparently now the last remaining Poison on Earth. Yay?
Old Man Logan #41-42: “Logan the Hunted”
Old Man Logan is obviously on its way to some sort of wrap-up. With the original Wolverine on his way back, the Wastelands version is simply redundant. The question is how to draw a satisfying line under this version of the character, given that his whole schtick is that his story came to an end only for him to return to the game.
Kill him? Can’t really do that while bringing back the real Logan at the same time. Have him wander off into the sunset? Tough to buy. Send him back to the Wastelands? It’s the obvious thing to do, but it doesn’t seem very satisfying. Ed Brisson’s answer seems to be to play up Logan’s mortality, so that his return to the Wastelands (to die) can seem like a dignified farewell.
X-Men Gold #26-30 – “‘Til Death Do Us Part”
Bait and switch marriage issues seem to be the thing this year for superhero comics. Not that I’m complaining too much; the Batman issue works as a story even if it makes the hype look insincere, while X-Men Gold seemed to be on the verge of marrying off Kitty and Peter for no particular reason beyond the fact that it seemed like an X-Men-y sort of thing to do.
How many of today’s X-Men readers actually are invested in the idea of Kitty and Peter’s relationship, I wonder? It’s something that gets referenced from time to time, but the actual meat of it stems from Claremont stories back in the early 1980s – it was in the past even by the time I started reading. The marriage we actually get in issue #30 seems like one that far more readers are likely to care about, so if anything, it’s a switch that many fans will see as a trade up.
Charts – 20 July 2018
You will not be surprised to hear that “Three Lions” is no longer number one.
1. Drake – “In My Feelings”
Drake’s third number one of the year (after “Nice for What” and “God’s Plan”) and his fourth in total. It’s broken from the album pack, presumably because it’s being used in viral dance videos – those don’t count towards the chart, even under the new rules, because only the official video counts. Still, it’s giving the track a bit more attention. The other two Drake tracks on this week’s chart are “Don’t Matter To Me” at 5, and “Nonstop” at 15. “Scorpion” naturally gets a third week at number one on the album chart.
Charts – 14 July 2018
Well, this is unfortunate timing.
1. David Baddiel, Frank Skinner & The Lightning Seeds – “Three Lions”
England’s favourite football song soars to number one on the strength of the team’s sterling performance in the World Cup! The semifinal, and peak of English excitement, was almost perfectly timed to coincide with the end of the chart week. And… they lost. So “Three Lions” arrives at number one just in time for the mood to be over. Ah well.
