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”
The X-Axis – 11 November 2012
It’s another heavy week, but then that’ll happen when you’re churning out material.
Age of Apocalypse #9 – Isn’t it a bit odd that, nine issues in, this book still has a “From the pages of Uncanny X-Force” banner emblazened across the cover? I mean, if anyone cared how the book was launched, you’d think they’d have picked up on it by now.
Anyway, the plot of this series suddenly seems to be going somewhere more definite. After last issue’s encounter with the local version of Dr Doom, our heroes have got hold of Doom’s clever device to divert all Wolverine’s power away from him and get him back to normal, thus presumably saving the world, I guess. Now they just need to figure out how to use it, and for that, Prophet enlists the aid of Monet St Croix, picking up on a storyline from earlier in the series. Meanwhile, Jean and Graydon go on that date she promised a while back, since Graydon did technically go to speak to his father as requested. Even if he did hit him a bit.
Charts – 4 November 2012
The X-Axis – 4 November 2012
There’s a podcast this weekend, as House to Astonish celebrates its fourth birthday! Check it out just one post down.
Meanwhile, over at the X-office, one new title this week – well, sort of – while two books get wrapped up as we head into Marvel NOW.
A+X #1 – The cover design and recap page present this book as a successor to AvX: Versus, the all-fight-no-plot miniseries that mainly demonstrated that that sort of thing wears thin rather quickly. It’s hard to believe that this book hasn’t just been conjured into existence in an attempt to capitalise on Versus‘s surprisingly decent sales, and equally hard to believe that it will succeed in doing so.
House to Astonish Episode 94
Join Paul and I as we celebrate the four-year anniversary of House to Astonish, with discussion of the effect of Hurricane Sandy, the purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney, Bryan Singer on X-Men: Days of Future Past, the next two Marvel Now! teasers and Before Watchmen: Dollar Bill. We’re also reviewing Joe Kubert Presents, Multiple Warheads and Bedlam, and answer questions we’ve solicited at the last minute on Twitter. All this plus the Maniac Consumer, utopian futuristic fly-y people and the most unexpected Ant-Man villain of them all.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available on the embedded player below. It’s also available through iTunes or via Stitcher.com and their free iOS and Android apps. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Thanks for listening, and here’s to the next four years.
