Charts – 17 March 2013
Let’s get straight to it, shall we?
38. Blake Lewis – “Your Touch”
Blake Lewis was the runner-up of American Idol in 2007, since when he’s released a couple of albums in the States to sharply diminishing returns. (If Wikipedia is to be believed, his debut album sold 309,000, and the follow-up managed just 10,000.) With this, the lead track from his third album, Lewis hurls himself on top of the passing dubstep bandwagon and clings on for all his might. It’s not horrible, actually, but it’s clearly the work of someone chasing trends.
The X-Axis – 17 March 2013
It’s a podcast weekend, so check one post down for discussion of Age of Ultron, Aliens vs Parker, and Lost Vegas. Oh, and the link to our RedBubble store is there too.
Housekeeping announcement: I’m taking next week off, so the X-Axis will return in two weeks (or a bit after).
And now…
Uncanny X-Men #3 – The previous issue ended with the Avengers showing up, but it did seem a bit early for that fight, so it’s no great shock to find that this issue doesn’t actually contain it. What happens instead is that they talk to each other for a while, and then when the Avengers finally decide to have a go at arresting Scott’s team, Tempus just freezes them all in place.
House to Astonish Episode 102
Bags of stuff to talk about this time round, with chat about Marvel’s SXSW announcements (and the fallout from their 700 Firsts giveaway), Justice League of America‘s sales, the casting of Drax the Destroyer, the delay of the adjectiveless X-Men book, Afterlife with Archie, the closure of JManga and a quick trot through the June solicitiations. We’ve also got reviews of Lost Vegas, Aliens vs Parker and Age of Ultron, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is seeing other people’s lives flash before its eyes. All this plus War is Awesome, Captain America’s dramatic walk and the impracticalities of a Top Cat heist.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available through the embedded player below. We’re also on Stitcher.com or their free iOS and Android apps.
Don’t forget that we’ve also got a range of super-swanky T-shirts available at our Redbubble store – love comics, look cool.
Let us know what you think, in the comments, via email, through Twitter or on our Facebook fan page.
Charts – 10 March 2013
A pretty quiet week, to be honest, but there are a few points of interest in here.
30. The Stereophonics – “Indian Summer”
Hey, these guys are still going! I always regarded the Stereophonics as meat-and-potatoes indie-rock plodders at the best of times, but they’ve been around since 1997, so they must be doing something right. This is the lead single from their new album “Graffiti on the Train”, which enters the album chart this week at 3. It seems to show them mutating into a lower-impact Bon Jovi. Is this what they call “growing old gracefully”?
The X-Axis – 10 March 2013
Quite a lot to get through – though for once, that’s mostly because I’ve still got three titles to cover from last week. Also, it’s Titles Beginning With A week!
A + X #5 – Quite the random selection this time, as the book seems to be broadening its already broad agenda to “any two characters as long as one of them’s associated with the Avengers titles and the other is associated with the X-Men titles.” So in the lead slot we’ve got Iron Fist and Doop by Kathryn Immonen and David Lafuente, while the second story, by Kieron Gillen and Joe Bennett, has Mr Sinister crossing paths with Loki.
Charts – 3 March 2013
It’s not the busiest week, but there are a few interesting records here nonetheless.
Admittedly, not so much this first one.
39. Paramore – “Now”
Well, that was non-specifically discontented. It’s alright, but I think they wrote better tunes when they were doing straight power pop. It’s their 6th UK hit; the biggest was “Ignorance”, which made number 14 in 2009. Sales on this must have been hugely frontloaded by fan purchases, since it was at 23 in the midweeks.
The X-Axis – 3 March 2013
It’s a podcast weekend, so check out the show one post down, where we’re reviewing Justice League of America, Nova and Five Weapons.
Meanwhile, it’s another of those weeks where I haven’t yet received the books that I’m still buying in physical form, so we’ll be back later in the week to cover Astonishing X-Men #59, Gambit #9, and X-Treme X-Men #11. As it happens, that still leaves us with plenty to talk about. If I have time, I’ll also try to have a look over the first six issues of X-Men: Legacy, which are going to form the first trade paperback. No promises, mind.
Uncanny Avengers #4 – This is the end of the first arc, but I see that the collected edition will actually run up to issue #5 – which, to judge from the solicitations, will contain a one-shot story rounding out both the cast and the page count.
House to Astonish – The Alternate Titles
Anyone who heard me talk about it a few episodes back or seen the interview with me that went up on the Beat a little while back might remember that I recently discovered the scrap of paper on which I’d written the various names which I’d come up with for the podcast back before we launched.
Having made that list, Paul highlighted a half-dozen or so that he liked best, and we then picked one of those for the name of the podcast.
We figured it might be fun to let you see the full list – we meant to put it up for the hundredth but with everything else that was going on in that episode we totally forgot. So here it is! The ones in italics were the final six, with House to Astonish (obv) being the winner.
- The Men Without Fear
- House to Astonish
- Secondary Mutation
- Because You Demanded It
- Heroes for the ’90s
- Words and Pictures
- Variant Edition [NB: we didn’t realise at the time that this was already the name of a podcast]
- The Team-Up You Demanded
- Graphic Novelty
- Motion Picture Funnies Weekly
- The Fill-In Artists
- Direct Edition
- In This Issue… Someone Dies!
- Secret Origin
- Prestige Format
- Four Panels
- Digest Readers
- Superman’s Pals Paul and Al
- Squarebound
- Deadly Hands of Comics
- World’s Fannest
- The Panel Show
- Our Comics At War
- The Shed of Ideas
- Meanwhile, Across Town
- Border Skirmishes
House to Astonish Episode 101
Following our 100th episode extravaganza, we’re back with a regular old-fashioned episode of House to Astonish, with discussion of the Pandora and Batman/Superman ongoings, the expansion of the Fables empire, the Brother Lono miniseries, Gail Simone’s Red Sonja, the death of Damian Wayne, the Unwritten OGN, the Larfleeze title, Monkeybrain’s print distribution, IDW’s cartoon licenses, Columbia University’s acquisition of the Elfquest archives, the possibilities of Marvel Fist, the coming and going of WTF Month and Steven Sanders’s Symbiosis Kickstarter (it’s a busy couple of weeks). We’ve also got reviews of Five Weapons, Justice League of America and Nova, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a master of spin. All this plus the DC New 52 Continuity Steerage Sub-Committee, a tasteless, odourless neurotoxin and a competently plumbed-in bathroom.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the player below. You can also listen to us via Stitcher.com or their iOS or Android apps, or get us on iTunes (where every review helps).
Don’t forget, you can also deck yourself out in some of our tasteful and stylish T-shirts by visiting our Redbubble store!
Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, via email, on Twitter or on our Facebook fan page.
Charts – 24 February 2013
Another quiet week for new releases, this time for very good reason. This chart covers the week of the Brit Awards, the UK’s equivalent of the Grammies, which was always going to dominate the news cycle, and always spawns a few unlikely midweek hits thanks to re-entries from winners and people who performed on the show. Plus, the only genuine major release of the week is a high profile charity single, and nobody wants to go up against that. So, not much going on.
But here’s what there is.
A re-entry because he performed it at the Brits. Originally a number one last year.
38. Tyler James (featuring Kano) – “Worry About You”
Tyler James is the closest The Voice UK came to discovering a star, which is to say that his previously comatose career has at least begun to stir again. These things are relative, though – “Worry About You” only just makes the top 40, even with the support of Radio 1 (who are kind of obliged). All that said, it’s an okay record and really did deserve to go higher.
