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.
The X-Axis Archive
After many, many questions from commenters asking where they’re available, we’ve decided to finally make the archive of the old X-Axis reviews available as a permanent link here on the site. You’ll find it on the right hand side for your ease of access. NB: this only goes up to the point where Paul moved his blogging to If Destroyed, so for anything after that point, check the If Destroyed site instead.
The X-Axis – 24 February 2013
Back to another quiet week for the X-books, but since I’ve got a bit of spare time for once, I’ll chuck in some of this week’s other new releases for a change. (Actually, it’s not such a quiet week for the X-books if you take a broader idea of the line – there’s also Deadpool #5 and Wolverine Max #4, but I don’t count either of them, and besides, I’m buying Wolverine Max in trade. Digression over.)
Justice League of America #1 – Not to be confused with the other Justice League, who are apparently not of America. In fact, that turns out not to be a technicality so much as the starting point for this book’s premise: the US government can’t control the Justice League, so it wants one of its own. Hence, Justice League of America, the operative words being “of America”.
Belarus.
I think, during the podcast, we mentioned the magnificently misjudged Belarussian Eurovision entry, “I Love Belarus”. There’s kind of a protocol in Eurovision – humble and welcoming celebration of national culture, yes. Full-bore patriotic flagwaving, no. After all, you can’t vote for your own song.
Anyhow. This be it. Never has Belarus been more emphatically and catchily endorsed. The WWE ought to give someone a Belarus gimmick just so they can use this as theme music.
Charts – 17 February 2013
The X-Axis – 17 February 2013
Right! Back to business as usual!
And after a couple of quiet weeks, this time it’s the inevitable deluge…
Age of Apocalypse #12 – Just another two issues to go, and those are both part of the X-Termination crossover. As I recall, the previous issue seemed to make the pacing work for it, at the cost of de-emphasising some of the individual cast members’ storylines. With this issue, though, David Lapham appears to be back to trying to get through loads of outstanding plots in the time available. Logan has been defeated, at least in the sense that he no longer has Apocalypse’s power and he’s sane again. But of course that doesn’t just lead to his military apparatus vanishing, so the government is still pretty much in control. So what we get is an issue that reads like it started life as the idea for a second year of stories, with Monet emerging as the rival leader figure now that she’s got some chance of coming out on top. At around the same time, we’ve also got Graydon Creed confronting his father, Goodnight being exposed within the Hellfire Club (the actual role of which has never really been made terribly clear), and the scientists wondering what they’re going to do with the power of Apocalypse that they’ve managed to harness with their Big Machine. There are a lot of threads being drawn together here, as is inevitable when a series with longer term plans is being wrapped up, and in one sense Lapham is handling them all well – but it’s hard to shake the feeling that these are storylines which were intended to play out at a much, much more leisurely pace.
House to Astonish Episode 100
It’s finally here – the hundredth episode of House to Astonish! We’re joined by Carrie Kennedy, Susi O’Brien, Stu West and Amal El-Mohtar to discuss topic suggested by friends, listeners and comics pros, encompassing digital comics, boycotts, the greatest comics out today, what Marvel would be like if they’d done right by Kirby, favourite superhero movies, reinventions of Marvel characters, the Eurovision Song Contest, pie, monkeys and what goes on inside the human stomach. We’ve got contributions from Reilly Brown, Jeff Lester of Wait, What?, Steve Morris of Comics Bulletin, Steven Sanders, Al Ewing, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool, Heidi MacDonald of the Beat, Alex de Campi, Michael Kupperman, Stephen Wacker, Antony Johnston, Kieron Gillen, Justin Jordan, Lauren Sankovitch, Andy Khouri and Andrew Wheeler of Comics Alliance, Brandon Graham and Emma Rios. All this plus cake, booze, an alcoholic with a spanner, Wolverine vs Montessori and Wong’s hash brownies in our longest ever episode (by 25 seconds).
You’ll have noticed that we’ve had a spruce-up of our design – the immensely talented James Wendelborn has designed our new logos, and you may be pleased to learn that we’ve put those to good use already in our official House to Astonish Redbubble store – if you want to show the world your affinity for the show there’s now a way to do it! You can find it here – it’s the swankiest way to combine comics podcasting and sartorial excellence.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think of the show, either in the comments, on Twitter, by email on our Facebook fan page.
Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to the show or who’s enjoyed it so far – here’s to many more episodes.
Elimination Chamber 2013
The WWE’s February show is always an awkward one. The Royal Rumble in January determines the challenger for (one of) the world title(s) at Wrestlemania; that show doesn’t come until early April. Meanwhile, there’s a show to fill. In recent years, that slot has been taken with Elimination Chamber, based on a six-man cage match. The idea is that two men start, another four enter at five minute intervals, elimination occurs by pinfall or submission, and the last person left is the winner.
Previously, the company has taken the extraordinarily ill-advised approach of putting both the Raw and Smackdown titles in the line in separate Elimination Chamber matches – thus rather undermining the significance of the Royal Rumble, by giving another ten challengers a shot the next month. This time round, sense has finally prevailed – they’ve dropped that idea, and finally gone for what they should have done all along: since Rumble winner John Cena has elected to go for Raw’s title at Wrestlemania, the Chamber will decide who challenges for Smackdown’s.
Of course, that also means that the rest of the card is free to feature more or less normal matches.
1. WWE Title: The Rock v CM Punk. Rock is going to be around until Wrestlemania, and as widely expected, he won the title at the Rumble in his big comeback, ending CM Punk’s year-plus title reign. This all makes perfect sense, since if you’re going to shell out for Rock to be on the show at Wrestlemania, you probably want him to be in the main event.
Charts – 10 February 2013
Don’t get too comfortable. We won’t be here long. The singles market remains weirdly moribund as we head into February, with only a single new entry on this week’s chart. We do have some big climbers, but in terms of actual new records, you’ll have Fall Out Boy or you’ll have nothing.
40. Jake Bugg – “Lightning Bolt”
38. Nickelback – “How You Remind Me”
36. One Direction – “Little Things”
30. The Fray – “How To Save A Life”
Since something’s got to replace the records dropping out of the charts, we have a few re-entries down at the bottom. Jake Bugg was still floating around just outside the top 40. “Little Things” is probably here because it was used on Dancing on Ice last weekend. I’ve no clue what the others are doing here. The Fray made number 4 with this single six years ago; Nickleback’s “How You Remind Me” dates back to 2002. Something has suddenly made them pick up sales again but I honestly don’t know what. Any suggestions, let us know in the comments thread.
The X-Axis – 10 February 2013
And so, in the week when people across Britain weighed up the unexpectedly related questions, “How do I feel about horses?” and “Can I be bothered cooking my own food?”, we find ourselves with another weird example of Marvel scheduling. Despite the large number of X-books released each month – the checklist lists 19, though that’s counting two Deadpool books – Marvel have only two of them coming out this week. Not that this is a complaint, as such; more a resigned bemusement at what could possibly be going through their minds.
I’d understand if they were moving stuff aside in order to give a major release like Uncanny X-Men #1 a clear run for our attention – that would make some degree of sense. Instead, we’ve got two middle chapters coming out, and presumably a vast deluge of X-related material in some later week to make up for it. I just don’t get the thinking.
(Oh, just a reminder that, as we mentioned on the last podcast, it’ll be another week before the Landmark Issue #100. Current plan is to record it next Sunday.)
Anyway. Comics! Both of them!
