Charts – 2 December 2012
The regular music industry is already shutting down for Christmas. Coming up: Christmas records, a charity record, stuff promoted on X Factor, and a handful of actual regular releases.
Covered on X Factor last weekend, and since it’s not that well known to the general public, it’s the sort of record that sees real benefits from that. “Wires” was Athlete’s only top 10 hit, making number 4 in 2005. The group are still together, but haven’t released any new material since 2010.
You may have noticed that X Factor hasn’t had quite the same impact on the charts this year, though it’s cropped up here and there. They also mercifully spared us the annual charity single. With the producers keen to avoid another unedifying squabble over the Christmas number 1 slot, the final is actually next week, so that the winners’ single will be on sale on 9 December to (they hope) be number 1 on 16 December. Much of the media coverage is centred on whether a chap called Christopher Maloney who has been panned by the judges since day one might actually win, which would apparently be some sort of disaster – though bear in mind that most stories of this sort actually emanate from the producers working their own angle.
The X-Axis – 2 December 2012
I’m taking the opportunity presented by the current wave of relaunches to make the jump from print to digital as each book comes round for a relaunch. This is fortunate, as I’m still waiting to receive the books from this week that I ordered in print, but by this point, that’s just Gambit and X-Treme X-Men, neither of which is exactly the focal point of the schedule. What we do have is the second issues of no less than four Marvel Now titles. Oh yes, and an annual.
A+X #2 – The first issue of A+X sold remarkably well, inheriting the top ten sales of AvX: Versus, of which it is ostensibly a continuation. I’ll be fascinated to see how long that lasts, considering that (notwithstanding Jeph Loeb’s vague gestures at foreshadowing in issue #1) it now seems pretty clear that this is simply going to be an anthology of self-contained stories united solely by the theme of team-ups between Avengers and X-Men characters – a line which is getting increasingly blurred anyway. In quality terms, this is probably for the best; A+X is simply a playpen in which creators can do whatever they feel like for a few pages, and the format here is far less restrictive than the very limited Versus. But books like this don’t have a track record of sales success, so it’s hard to imagine A+X sales holding up once readers and retailers figure out what the book actually is. If, somehow or other, it bucks that trend – well, more power to it.
Housekeeping
No episode of the podcast this weekend unfortunately – various life things have gotten in the way. We’re hoping to record mid-week, and we’ll keep you updated.
Charts – 25 November 2012
One Direction get elbowed aside after a single week by perhaps the most boring number one of the year. But first, rock classics on iTunes.
40. AC/DC – “Highway To Hell”
You might not have realised this, but AC/DC apparently weren’t available on iTunes until this week. The charming luddites have finally succumbed, and so a bit of a cherrypicking of their back catalogue is going on this week. There’s one more coming up.
The X-Axis – 25 November 2012
Happy Thanksgiving, or Black Shopping Day, or whatever it is they call it by this point in the weekend. Despite the holiday, Marvel have several of the Marvel Now! relaunch books out this week (and I’m sure we’ll talk about some of the more interesting ones on the next podcast). There’s also a batch of X-books, and while it’s be fair to say they’re not exactly the central focus of the release schedule this month, we’re not exactly marking time here either.
Well, except on Wolverine. That one’s kind of marking time.
Astonishing X-Men #56 – Hey, Marvel – if you’re going to do a plot twist where you fake Iceman dying, don’t spoil it by sticking him on the cover. I know nobody was ever going to buy it, but let’s at least go through the motions of pretending otherwise, hmm? (Come to think of it, why does the cover of this issue have Iceman throwing cards in the style of Gambit? What’s that got to do with anything?)
House to Astonish Episode 95
It’s an absolute epic of an episode this time round, with two hours of chat for you – we’ve got news on MCM Scotland, the cancellation of Hellblazer and the launch of Constantine, the Marvel Now! radio ads, the Age of Ultron, the latest Marvel teasers and Tony Harris’s cosplayer rant. We’ve also got reviews of Great Pacific and X-Men Legacy, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe gets the chop. On top of that we’ve got interviews with Mark Waid and Kieron Gillen (the latter of which is an epic taking in Uncanny X-Men, Iron Man, Journey Into Mystery, Young Avengers and Death’s Head). All this plus the Valkyrior Territorial Army, the dorkiest state in the US and a special guest comics creator… who’s topless.
The podcast is here, or on Mixcloud here, or accessible via the player below. We’re also available via Stitcher.com or their free iOS and Android apps. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
The X-Axis – 18 November 2012
Better late than never…
All-New X-Men #1 – Regular listeners to the podcast won’t be surprised to hear that I was bracing myself for this to be terrible. It’s not that Brian Bendis is a bad writer by any stretch of the imagination; I think he’s written a lot of good stuff for Marvel over the years. But he has been consistently bad on books with large casts, showing no real grasp on how to juggle them. His Avengers has been a bit of a mess, shall we say.
Charts – 18 November 2012
I haven’t had a chance to properly read most of this week’s X-books yet, so in the meantime, here’s this week’s chart post to be getting on with.
The number 1 single from September. It’s back because of the overspill of hype from their new single, which we’ll come to in a bit.
37. Example – “Close Enemies”
This is the follow-up to “Say Nothing”, which reached number 2 in September. Considering that it’s had over a month of promotion, number 37 is hugely weak (and since it was 31 in the midweeks, it’s a fair bet it won’t be going further).
Survivor Series 2012
As I believe we mentioned on the last podcast, Al’s off at Thought Bubble this weekend, so we’ll be back next week (possibly with some interviews, you never know).
X-Axis will… yeah, that’ll probably be Monday, the way things are going. Busy weekend.
But this article is a preview of something that airs tomorrow, so let’s run it down.
Historically, Survivor Series was the WWE’s fourth-biggest show of the year (behind Wrestlemania, Royal Rumble and Summerslam), but nowadays it’s just a monthly show with a particularly well-established gimmick, the ten-man elimination tag team match. The downside with ten-man tags is that they really do chew through a lot of wrestlers, so at a time like this, when roster depth is not at an all-time high, there’s a certain degree of lip service being paid to the concept. We do have one as the semi-main event, but it’s been painfully obvious that the company is making it up as they go along right now…
Charts – 11 November 2012
You may or (more likely) may not be interested to know that this is the week that the Official Charts Company chooses to deem the sixtieth anniversary of the chart. Strictly speaking, it’s a bit of a fudge. The current “official” chart, which is official in the sense that it’s recognised by the British record industry, actually dates from 1969. Before that, there were various unofficial and frequently contradictory charts. But because of the obvious desirability of having a list of “official” number 1s stretching back to the dawn of rock and roll, the OCC recognises two of the earlier charts as being retroactively official. So what actually happened sixty years ago was the first appearance of the NME chart – though even that’s a rather grand description of a bloke ringing round some record shops and preparing a top 12 (it was meant to be a top ten, but the sample size was so low that there were several ties).
But hey, from small acorns and so forth.
40. Pink – “Try”
