X-Men vol 5 – “Burning Earth”
If you have four issues to fill before Secret Wars, plainly you could do a lot worse than call upon the services of G Willow Wilson, who’s been delivering on Ms. Marvel. In fact, anyone looking for a Marvel Universe title to try could do a lot worse than Ms. Marvel.
As it turns out, though, G Willow Wilson can also do a lot worse than Ms. Marvel. “Burning Earth” is not especially bad, but it’s safe to say that this is one to be filed in the Minor Works section of her bibliography.
House to Astonish Episode 132
It’s a relatively quiet week for comics news, but Paul and I have got a bit of chat for you regardless, as we look at the announcement of We(l)come Back at Boom!, the CBLDF’s new “Comics Connector” programme, the cancellations and renewals of a bunch of Marvel and DC TV shows and Bill Jemas’s new Ultimate imprint (now with added zombies!). We’ve also got reviews of Secret Wars and Swords of Sorrow, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe treads lightly, for it treads upon your dreams. All this plus Mike Deodato the Multiple Man, a garage with stairs and the Conspiracy Theory Channel.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And don’t forget our Redbubble store, where we can help you finally look as good as you feel.
Charts – 3 May 2015
Amazing X-Men vol 3 – “Once and Future Juggernaut”
(NB: This volume also covers the Axis tie-in and Annual #1, but we’ve covered them separately.)
As Secret Wars looms, and the second-tier X-Men books find themselves with an arc to kill before they get there, filler mounts. Chris Yost isn’t even writing one of the stand-in Battleworld X-books, but here he is with “Once and Future Juggernaut”.
But for whatever reason – perhaps he’s carrying out an editorial remit, perhaps he just wanted to set something up for future writers to use – there’s actually a point to this one. It’s an exercise in rehabbing (and re-setting) the Juggernaut, and to a lesser extent Colossus.
Charts – 26 April 2015
Guardians of the Galaxy & X-Men: Black Vortex
THE BLACK VORTEX! Its cosmic tendrils bring corruption and devastation wheresoe’er they wind!
THE BLACK VORTEX! Its thirteen chapters offer a glimpse into the abyss of eternity!
THE BLACK VORTEX! Playing goth, industrial and darkwave; women enter free before midnight.
Once the X-books got to dominate crossovers, or even skip them entirely, but today things have changed. And so here the X-Men find themselves as junior partners in a thirteen-part crossover that in fact only includes three X-books – All-New X-Men #38-39, and Cyclops #12. The remainder of the story wends its way through two book-end one-shots, Guardians of the Galaxy #24-25, Legendary Star-Lord #9-11, Guardians Team-Up #3, Nova #28, and Captain Marvel #14.
Wolverines vol 3 – “The Living and the Dead”
I don’t know quite what I was expecting from a weekly series following on from Wolverine’s death and starring the likes of X-23, Daken and Sabretooth. But it probably wasn’t Wolverines, which, if nothing else, is at least the most cheerfully insane thing that the X-office has produced in ages.
Having started off with a relatively coherent premise – five other test subjects of Dr Cornelius exploit his hypnotic programming to forcibly enlist Wolverine’s associates in the search for a cure for their own fatal modifications – Wolverines has meandered wildly off course. A big chunk of the cast disappeared during volume 2. Mystique seized control of the remaining group and wandered off on a vaguely-defined agenda of her own (seemingly something to do with bringing Destiny back from the dead). Fang, of all people, showed up to torment Wolverine’s rogue’s gallery.
Charts – 19 April 2015
A very odd week, full of singles suddenly vaulting their way up the charts after making an initial appearance at the bottom end.
29. Meghan Trainor – “Dear Future Husband”
Up 11. The midweeks don’t show it making much further progress, though. I keep mis-typing the title as “Dead Future Husband”, which sounds like a much more interesting song.
27. Kodaline – “The One”
Chikara 15.1 – “A New Start”
Preamble: Okay, so. I did a preview of this show, the first Chikara show of 2015, back in January, and then never came back to the topic. But I figured it’d be interesting to look back on all this year’s shows a few months behind, to see where they ended up going. It’s going to be more of an episode guide thing, I guess. At time of writing, five shows from this year have been released (the fifth came out while I was writing this, and I haven’t seen it yet); a further three were taped in the UK last month and should be out shortly.
These posts are going to be pretty erratic, by the way – don’t expect any sort of regular schedule. If anything, I’m confidently expecting to drift further and further behind. “A New Start” is the season opener, so this is going to be unusually lengthy; most shows will have a lot more matches that we can skip happily over in search of the bigger picture, and the next show is particularly light.
Charts – 12 April 2015
So, no reviews this week – because there’s nothing to review, aside from anything else – but don’t forget there’s a new podcast, one post down. Meanwhile… for the second week running, the midweek charts get it wrong.
40. Meghan Trainor – “Dear Future Husband”
