Charts – 14 April 2023
So apparently Ellie Goulding is still a thing.
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
That’s two weeks, which is way outperforming expectations. Ellie Goulding’s longest running number one was “Love Me Like You Do”, which had four weeks back in 2015. But her album “Higher Than Heaven” also enters the album chart at number one… despite it not including “Miracle” and having no hit singles of its own. That shouldn’t surprise me too much – four of Ellie Goulding’s five albums have now reached number one, and the fifth (2015’s “Delirium”) was just unlucky – it got to number 3 and actually had higher first week sales than the other four.
2020’s “Brightest Blue” did get to number one, and couldn’t get any singles into the top 75 either. None of the singles from “Higher Than Heaven” have actually made the top 100. This was the lead single from the album, which you’ve almost certainly never heard before. It came out nine months ago. To be fair, it was a moderate hit in some European countries. It reached number 11 in Finland.
5. Drake – “Search & Rescue”
Yes, that’s the whole video.
The X-Axis: w/c 10 April 2023
Okay, you seem to approve of this. Let’s stick with it.
STORM & THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #3. (Annotations here.) The risk with “Sins of Sinister” and its vast timescales is that everything becomes a little bit abstract. Sometimes the crossover has played off that very effectively – I’ve noted before the way that we’re obviously inclined to root for the cosmic reset button to be hit, yet the hero character refuse to play ball by lying down and letting their universe be destroyed. But this issue feels a bit too remote. Sinister’s role is kept fairly small, and our main focus is on Jon Ironside as Storm’s heir, accepting Mr Sinister’s proposal to resurrect her. The tension here, in theory, is between Ironside’s faith in Storm – which he seems to have adopted in part as penance for something that went badly wrong when he doubted her in the past – and the Arakkii culture of rejecting resurrection, with Storm herself as one of the most explicit cases of that. But Ironside has always felt more like a trope than a character, and I have trouble getting very invested in him. It might also be that Ewing’s cosmic-scaled concepts aren’t such a good fit with Alessandro Vitti’s art, which feels better suited to something more intimate. Either way, this didn’t really click for me.
X-MEN #21. (Annotations here.) This is part of a curiously structured crossover with Captain Marvel, which involves two completely unrelated Brood storylines that seem to come together in the final chapter – which will be Captain Marvel #49. Other than the fact that they involve groups of Brood being freed from Broo’s control by Nightmare, the two arcs don’t seem to be connected in any particular way, and thus far, buying the Captain Marvel issues hasn’t notably added to the experience of reading the X-Men ones. It feels a bit more like the books came up with unrelated Brood stories by coincidence and then decided to try and tie them together after the fact, instead of tossing a coin. Maybe Captain Marvel #49 will prove me wrong.
Storm & The Brotherhood of Mutants #3
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 9: The Song of the End”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Alessandro Vitti
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A symbolic image of a godlike Sorm with a hazy crowd looking up at her.
PAGE 2. Establishing shot of the World Farm.
It was on fire when Mr Sinister arrived at it in Immoral X-Men #3 – apparently, this is just its standard appearance.
The narration follows the 6-4-5 syllable pattern of Lodus Logos’s dialogue in X-Men Red – the “Great Lodus” referred to here.
The Storm System. In Immortal X-Men #3, Destiny’s vision of possible future timelines includes “the Storm System” as one possible end point, following “the Empire of the Red Diamond”.
PAGE 3. Jon Ironside and Khora.
“What Arakko once meant – what it’s come to mean again”. The inhabitants of the World Farm consider themselves the continuation of Arakki culture, since they’re based on the survivors of the original Arakko’s destruction. Prior to relocating to our dimension, Arakko spent centuries in eternal war in the dimension of Amenth; as this particular timeline has turned out, the society’s relatively peaceful time on Mars turned out to be a blip.
X-Men #21 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #21
“Lord of the Brood, part three”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Cyclops and Rogue fight the Brood. This continues the fight scene which has been shown over the covers of recent issues of X-Men and Captain Marvel (which is where Rogue has been appearing).
In Captain Marvel #47, Captain Marvel’s team defeat a bunch of Brood and rescue Rogue. Binary is found hooked up to some sort of organic machinery. In what might politely be termed a high degree of plot convenience, it turns out that Binary can only be freed if someone else takes her place, and Captain Marvel duly makes the required heroic sacrifice. Rogue explains that the Brood faction in the Captain Marvel arc are led by a Brood Empress who resents Broo’s control over them and took the opportunity to break free of him when it arose. (X-Men has established that this was brought about by Nightmare, but the Captain Marvel cast don’t know this yet.) The Empress blames the Kree for creating the King Egg that gave Broo control over her race in X-Men vol 5 #9, and has a convoluted scheme to convert superheroes into Brood in order to use them as an army against the Kree; the part-Kree Captain Marvel is particularly key to this plot. The issue ends with the heroes largely defeated and a groggy Captain Marvel apparently unable to register the giant Brood Empress looming over her.
Charts – 7 April 2023
Ah. This wasn’t in the script.
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
So, last week, “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus was finally knocked off number 1 after ten weeks by Ed Sheeran’s new single “Eyes Closed”. I did flag that it had only made it to number one thanks to the boost from first-week pre-orders of the CD single, which is very much a fanbase product, but as it turns out, it drops to number three this week. Threading their way to the top instead are Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding, with a single that’s been out for four weeks.
This is Calvin Harris’s eleventh number one single, counting guest appearances. The others are Dizzee Rascal’s “Dance Wiv Me” (2008), “I’m Not Alone” (2009), Rihanna’s “We Found Love” (2011), “Sweet Nothing” (2012), “Under Control” (2013), “Summer” (2014), “Blame” (2017), “Feels” (2017), “One Kiss” (2018) and “Promises” (2018). So it’s been five years, and he now has number 1s spanning a period of 15 years.
The X-Axis: w/c 3 April 2023
So, the review backlog has got to unwieldy proportions. It’s time to go for a fresh start and round out each week with a quick run through of all the week’s X-books. This week, that means…
IMMORAL X-MEN #3. (Annotations here.) The Sins of Sinister crossover enters its third month, with Sinister and Rasputin as practically the only characters left in a galaxy dominated by corrupted versions of the Quiet Council who have all gone to seed. Alessandro Vitti is the artist for this final phase, and I rather like the smeary griminess of it all; it’s sci-fi, but long after everything started falling apart. The structural gimmicks of the story are a tricky balancing act but I think it’s worked nicely so far, with the three books following different threads even if you do need to be reading all the titles to fully understand what’s going on. But what I really like is the meta theme that’s emerged both here and in Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants #2: as readers, our inclination is to root for the timeline to be reset, but the handful of remaining heroic characters, true to their never-say-die ideals, want to stop that happening. Because of course they do. It’s the destruction of the universe. That’s a nice little subversion of the tropes.
WOLVERINE #32. (Annotations here.) Well, if you enjoy monologues covering basically the same territory as the previous issue, only again, you’ll love this issue, in which Beast spells out everything he spelled out in the previous issue, only again. All that being said, my basic problem with the Beast storyline isn’t the premise so much as the fact that it was allowed to escalate to absurd proportions before anyone acted against him. I do wonder whether this is a book that suffered from the decision to extend the Krakoan period, since if it had ended as originally scheduled, then Beast’s schemes would have come crashing down not too long after his secret conquest of a South American nation came to light, which would have worked fine. Instead it’s had to try and keep finding ways to escalate.
Wolverine #32 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #32
“Weapons of X, part 2”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Juan José Ryp
Colourist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. The real Wolverine amidst an army of Beast’s clones.
PAGES 2-4. Beast’s Wolverine clones kill Lord Stewart.
Lord Stewart is a one-off character. Some publishers try to avoid using the names of real people; Marvel’s legal department is apparently made of sterner stuff.
“Since the UK pulled out of the treaty…” Back at the first Hellfire Gala, thanks to the machinations of Coven Akkaba over in Excalibur.
The Krakoan flowers were sourced via Maverick, as he confirms in passing on page 15. It’s rather odd for Lord Stewart to plant the things here and then express surprise that the local wildlife are eating them (particularly as the stag will be part of a herd that he deliberately keeps for hunting purposes), but then he’s probably not meant to be very bright.
Beast presumably deems this an assassination-worthy event because Stewart is trying to break the monopoly on Krakoan plants, but that’s hardly much of an excuse. And, of course, the poor stalker is there to make sure that we have an unequivocal victim.
The Wolverine clones are all wearing the same control collars that Beast put on the real Wolverine in the previous arc – implying that there would be a real risk of this going very badly wrong for him if one of them happened to get cut free.
Immoral X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORAL X-MEN #3
“Sins of Sinister, part 8: Our Nine-Hundred-Years-and-Counting Mission”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Alessandro Vitti
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Sinister and Rasputin on the run from Exodus.
PAGE 2. Data page, with an opening quote from Candide. Candide is a satire on Gottfried Leibniz’s philosophy. Basically, Leibniz argued that if a better world was possible, God would have created that world instead. Therefore, this must be as good as it gets, and what appear to us to be flaws must in fact be optimum in the grand scheme of things, albeit for reasons that we may not be able to grasp. (This philosophy is often referred to as “optimism”, which didn’t have its modern meaning in Leibniz’s day; for modern readers, “optimum-ism” is probably a fairer reflection of what he was getting at.) The basic joke of Candide is to bombard the characters with things that are obviously just plain bad and watch them try to rationalise it away.
PAGES 3-8. Rasputin boards Prayerworld 537-2389 and retrieves a mission.
“Psychic log: the mission continues.” As with the story title, this echoes Star Trek. Rasputin’s ponytail is used as an icon to mark her narration. She makes sure to tell us at the outset that she believes they’re working to save the universe. The crew members who were aboard the Marauder when Sinister stole it last issue have apparently all died and gone unreplaced.
Charts – 31 March 2023
Nothing if not predictable…
1. Ed Sheeran – “Eyes Closed”
This is the lead single from his next album, predictably entitled “-” (or “Subtract”, if you must insist on saying it out loud). It’s an Ed Sheeran ballad single in the fairly well established mould. It is worth saying that it only reached number 1 thanks to first-week sales of the fan-marketed CD single, which is obviously a one-off – but that doesn’t mean it won’t gain in actual streaming next time round. Sheeran tracks tend to have staying power.
It’s his fourteenth number one single, which is the joint third highest total for any artist – the Beatles had 17, and Elvis Presley had 21. Sheeran is now tied with, um, Cliff Richard and Westlife. It seems inevitable that he’ll beat them, and I’d give him a strong chance of overtaking the Beatles.
“Flowers” by Miley Cyrus drops to number 2 after ten straight weeks at number 1, and most of the top 10 is uneventful. However…
The Incomplete Wolverine – 2011
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009
2010
It’s 2011, we’re still in the Utopian era, and we’re midway through the “Wolverine Goes To Hell” storyline. The first arc in that storyline already took us through to January 2011. When we left off, Wolverine had just been summoned back to his body, which was still occupied by demons.
Oh, and brace yourselves, because this is an insanely busy year.
WOLVERINE vol 4 #6-8
“Wolverine vs the X-Men”
by Jason Aaron & Daniel Acuña
February to April 2011
While his possessed body fights the X-Men, Wolverine fights the (literal) demons inside his mind, who are “razing” parts of his personality to make room for themselves – something that seems to have no impact whatsoever in later stories, so evidently they don’t do that much damage.
Wolverine defeats the demons with help of Emma Frost, a “Phoenix” who appears to be part of his subconscious, and a ghost of Nightcrawler who’s strongly implied to be genuine. Basically, Logan can purge the demons if he finally lets Jean Grey go – and he does, but only so he can take revenge on the people who banished him to Hell. He regains control of his body just as Cyclops was about to kill him (on the logic that it’s probably what Wolverine would have wanted).
This is really an extended fight scene. It comes across as an oddly extended coda to the main event in the previous arc, but it’s quite fun on its own terms.
