Charts – 28 April 2023
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
Well, I told you that Lewis Capaldi’s “Wish You The Best” only got to number 1 on the strength of first-week sales of the pre-ordered CD single. And as predicted, he doesn’t manage a second week at number one, so “Miracle” returns for its third. Not that “Wish You The Best” collapses – it’s at a very respectable number 3, with “Forget Me” also still in the top 10. And “Miracle” is very lucky to get that third week – it beats David Kushner’s “Daylight” by the equivalent of 267 sales, which is coin-toss territory.
11. Nines – “Tony Soprano 2”
Nines has previously been one of those rappers who does much better on the album chart. His two previous top 40 singles were “I See You Shining” (number 37 in 2018) and “Airplane Mode” (number 25 in 2020). But his last three albums all made the top 5, and the most recent was a number 1. This is the lead single from his next album. Nicely shot video.
The X-Axis: w/c 24 April 2023
SINS OF SINISTER: DOMINION #1. (Annotations here.) The end of the Sins of Sinister crossover, which has been pretty successful. Yes, there’s still a degree of haziness over what exactly a Dominion is – we seem to have slipped somewhere from it being a collective consciousness into being a single ascended person. And yes, I’m not really sure I follow the mechanics of what Moira actually does to influence events in the rebooted timeline – there’s a bit of handwaving going on there. But I’ll let it slide because the big picture works. It’s a dead end, but it’s a thousand years of dead end. In a perverse kind of way, the sheer scale of its pointlessness contributes to the awfulness of it all. You could make a case that it’s all rather abstract and distanced from human concerns, but again, that feels to me like precisely the impression you want to create about a timeline knocked disastrously off course in this way. And Paco Medina gives the finale a nice sense of scale, too.
And besides, it’s not simply a self-cancelling time loop. Rasputin IV sticks around. The storyline of Sinister and his Moira Engine is resolved. The entire direction of Mother Righteous and the Quiet Council is changed. The ending here is a big surprise and it works all the better because, alongside three months of Sinister Gone Wrong, we’ve also had a pretty good idea of what Mother Righteous’s preferred timeline might look like. I can see why people might have issues with some of this arc, but I liked it a lot.
Betsy Braddock, Captain Britain #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
BETSY BRADDOCK, CAPTAIN BRITAIN #3
“The Captain We Deserve”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Vasco Georgiev
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. The Fury as “Captain Britain”, with Morgan Le Fey behind him, and Betsy in chains, in front of a cheering crowd. Nothing very much like this happens in the issue, but it’s kind of the result that Morgan is hoping for.
PAGE 2. Brian and Meggan leave Betsy to babysit Maggie.
Considering that the Manor was moved to Cornwall in issue #1 and they’re going to see a show in London, they’re either planning to fly there in theatre clothes, or they’ve got a portal somewhere. Maybe there’s still a Krakoan gate they’re allowed to use, or maybe Brian just has something connected with Otherworld.
Brian seems to be hinting that he agrees with the criticisms that Betsy doesn’t spend enough time among actual British people instead of dealing with Otherworld stuff.
Sins of Sinister: Dominion #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
SINS OF SINISTER: DOMINION #1
“Sins of Sinister, part 11: ∞ Deadly Sins”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artists: Paco Medina & Lucas Werneck
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Mr Sinister in prayer – the present-day version, not the far-future one.
PAGE 2. The Storm System, 1000 years in the future.
This establishing shot joins the action at page 11 of Nightcrawlers #3. As Vox Ignis explained in that story, the Spirits of Vengeance (who left Earth early on) have possessed Galactus, fuelled by his rage at what Sinister has done to the universe.
PAGE 3. Sinister and Moira talk.
So far as these characters are concerned, we’re picking up from Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #3, which ended with Sinister shooting Jon Ironfire through the head. Moira’s absence was noted by Sinister in that issue, but it wasn’t clear that he was in radio contact with her. (There’s no contradiction, though, because Sinister doesn’t know where she is.)
The dead characters lying on the ground around Ironfire are Bloodroot (the red one), Old Oda (the bird) and Genas Mind-Flayer (the furry guy in the hood). Not that it really matters at this stage.
Charts – 21 April 2023
I’ll get to this week’s annotations in a couple of days. In the meantime, I still haven’t done last week’s chart post, so…
1. Lewis Capaldi – “Wish You The Best”
This is Lewis Capaldi’s fifth number one – the others are “Someone You Loved”, “Before You Go”, “Forget Me” and “Pointless”. He’s in heart-rending mode, and it’s getting a bit formulaic to my mind. The main reason why it’s number one is first-week sales of the CD single, which would have been pre-ordered by the fanbase. That CD single accounts for roughly a third of the song’s sales points; without them, it would have been on course for a respectable position lower down the top 10.
The X-Axis: w/c 17 April 2023
Well, look, it was a very heavy week for new releases, and on top of that I started late…
NIGHTCRAWLERS #3. (Annotations here.) You’ll have picked up that one thing I really like about the “Sins of Sinister” crossover is the way it plays with the trope of the cosmic reset button and specifically asks why any of it matters. Part of the answer is that even if it’s all a dead end so far as the narrative is concerned, it’s very important to the characters who’ve lived and died over the centuries in this reality, and there’s something slightly horrifying about the idea of casually rebooting it all. Another answer is that Sinister always planned to send back the facts of this timeline so that it could affect what happens next time round, and Mother Righteous is thinking along very similar lines. Nightcrawlers also “matters” for another reason: it gives us a clearer understanding of Mother Righteous, building on what’s been teased about her so far in Legion of X. So I’m more than happy with this issue, which delivers nicely on all those counts. Granted, there’s a lot of background characters who are arguably underdeveloped, and Vox Ignis’s turn feels rushed… but it works.
X-FORCE #39. (Annotations here.) Mmm. This is a mixed bag. On the plus side, I like the idea of Sage taking over to try and fix the direction of X-Force – even if she comes across as a little naive. And the Quiet Council deciding that as long as Beast is only going after enemies of the state, he’s not exactly a priority… kind of works, I guess? The Colossus storyline seems to finally be going somewhere too, and with Fall of X around the corner, you figure it’s coming to a climax. On the other hand, while I’m all for bringing in Laura rather than having Logan in two books, Percy doesn’t seem to get the character at all. You can’t do “I am a loner yet I am moved by the chance to be a hero” with someone who literally just finished a year in the X-Men. Plus, Laura is just not a character who does drinking games that involve stabbing people. So in practice, I’m not at all encouraged about bringing her in.
New Mutants: Lethal Legion #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #2
“Terrible Decisions”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciller: Enid Balám
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Escapade in front of a Lethal Legion recruitment poster, having apparently swapped roles with Grim Reaper – who isn’t in this story, but did have an involvement with an earlier version of the Lethal Legion. The papers blowing around her include photos of Dani, Rahne and Gabby.
PAGES 2-4. Wolfsbane and Morgan flee into an underground survivalist camp.
They disturbed this thing last issue, while hunting for potentially useful technology in an abandoned underground lab that once belonged to Spencer Smythe. It seems to be just some Thing Living In The Tunnels.
They stumble into what seems to be some sort of anti-mutant survivalist camp, hiding away from some sort of mutant-related apocalypse. So far as we can tell from this issue, this bunch seem relatively harmless – they really do just want to hide away in the tunnels and sit out the end of the world.
X-Force #39 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #39
“Internal Affairs”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Robert Gill
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Colossus and Wolverine (Laura) in action.
PAGES 2-7. The Quiet Council discuss the Beast.
Wolverine‘s appearance here is a direct repeat of page 11 of Wolverine #32. In the original scene, Wolverine has just marched into the Quiet Council chamber and dumped the body of the Beast (complete with the fungal boobytraps seen earlier in that issue). Wolverine complains about Beast being given “carte blanche”, and refuses Professor X’s request to talk about it privately. That scene ends with the first three lines of dialogue here. Wolverine’s brief exchange with Sage as he leaves the room is new.
The Quiet Council. As in Wolverine #32, Nightcrawler and Mr Sinister are both missing, without explanation. This avoids the need to address their status quo changes in Legion of X and Immortal X-Men.
Nightcrawlers #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NIGHTCRAWLERS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 10: The Sacred Heart”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artists: Lorenzo Tammetta & Phillip Sevy
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Mother Righteous, in front of a Ghost Rider-possessed Galactus.
PAGE 2. Mother Righteous recaps the last few centuries.
The Silver Mercator is apparently some kind of hybrid of the Silver Surfer and Mr M (most recently seen in Knights of X).
The Low Key Corps appear to be some sort of collection of alternate versions of Loki, perhaps under reference to the Loki variants seen in his TV show. The name seems to imply something akin to the Council of Cross-Time Kangs.
Auntie Fortune is the Nightcrawler chimera based on Domino, as seen in the previous two issues. As Righteous says, she was one of the first Nightcrawler chimeras to be recruited. We saw her in the previous issue as a frail old woman – apparently she’s been kept around as some sort of ghost (she appears to be see-through), perhaps for her symbolic value as an original. The thing floating next to her is presumably one of the Cortez lanterns mentioned in issue #1, which use the brain tissue of the late Fabian Cortez to provide power boosts.
House to Astonish Episode 202
Somehow it’s taken us four months to put out a regular format episode of House to Astonish, but we’re here now, and we’re remembering Al Jaffee and Rachel Pollack, talking about all the upcoming Fall of X and Knight Terrors books, enjoying Mark Waid’s mini-renaissance at DC and dissecting the digital drops of DSTLRY. We’re also reviewing The Great British Bump-Off and Guardians of the Galaxy and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. All this plus Slovakia’s Finest Punctuation Marks, Woolverine and a mincemeat omelette.
You can get the podcast here, or via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And hey! You! You over there, without a t-shirt! You know what would solve your problem about not having a t-shirt? A t-shirt!
