The X-Axis – 11 March 2012
These are going to be fairly brief, but hey, better than waiting for another week…
Age of Apocalypse #1 – To give credit where it’s due, if the X-office are under orders to come up with yet more ways of expanding the franchise, at least this one clearly has its own identity, rather than being yet another X-Men title (of which they shipped three last week). The original “Age of Apocalypse” alternate-reality crossover was way back in the 90s, but it was recently dusted off in X-Force as part of the “Dark Angel Saga” – no doubt with an eye on promoting this title, though there’s nothing wrong with that.
Despite the title, Apocalypse himself is nowhere to be seen in this new series. Instead, he’s long dead, and his heir Wolverine is running the world instead. The humans have largely been wiped out and a handful of guerrilla rebels defending the few survivors form the main cast (joined by the local versions of Jean Grey and Sabretooth, both of whom lost their powers in a Convenient Plot Contrivance in X-Force‘s Point One issue).
Housekeeping (2)
As suspected, no reviews tonight. (Been out of town all weekend, didn’t get a chance to pick up this week’s books before I left.) Hopefully early next week.
Infinite Comics… well, that’s, uh, more gimmicky than I was expecting. (Though online “DVD extras” aren’t a bad idea, on the right project.)
Housekeeping
Just a heads up that the next episode of the podcast is going to be pushed back a week, so it’ll (hopefully) be up on the 17th. One of those “no time to record it” things – though it means we’ll also be able to talk about this Infinite Comics thing Marvel are announcing on Sunday, whatever it may turn out to be.
(Reviews probably won’t be up until Monday either, although you never know.)
Charts – 4 March 2012
For the first time this year, we have a proper slate of new entries! Not just one at the top and a few stragglers outside the top 30! And with a couple of exceptions, they’re a fairly interesting bunch.
But despite facing a proper challenge for once, the number 1 single is, for the third week, “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye ft Kimbra.
It’s still selling 85,000 copies a week, after nine weeks out, and it’s comfortably the biggest single of the year so far. And as of right now, it’s still at the top of the iTunes chart, with no real challenge from this week’s new releases. Could be around a while.
On to this week’s seven new entries, almost all of which are worth a bit of attention.
The X-Axis – 4 March 2012
Well, this won’t take long, will it? After a veritable flood of X-books last week, this time we’ve got just the one – Astonishing X-Men #47. And since I’m kind of busy this weekend, let’s just do that one and be done with it.
This is the final part of Greg Pak and Mike McKone’s alternate-reality storyline “Exalted”. Just to bring you back up to speed: Cyclops has been kidnapped by the X-Men of a parallel world, along with a bunch of other Exiles-style X-Men counterparts. It turns out that this world was permanently damaged in a final battle between the X-Men and Magneto. In order to keep it going, they have a giant plot device – sorry, very important machine – which powers itself by absorbing the energy of mutants. In other words, to keep the world going, they have to keep chucking mutants onto the fire. All of the suitable local mutants having nobly sacrificed themselves already, they’ve started importing from parallel worlds. Because, after all, the X-Men are, in every world, heroes, and will therefore be thrilled at the opportunity to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
Charts – 26 February 2012
This is the annual post-Brit Awards chart, in which, as is by now traditional, the general non-music-buying public are suddenly alerted to some records that have been out for ages, and they stumble zombie-like up the chart for a week. Naturally, very few acts release major new singles in such a week, so once again, we’ve got the now familiar pattern of a moderately big release at the low end of the top 10, and some scattered new entries way down at the bottom of the chart.
But first, look who’s back at number one.
The X-Axis – 26 February 2012
This is a podcast weekend, so don’t forget the latest episode, just one post down from where you are now! Reviews include Glory, No Place Like Home and Challengers of the Unknown.
None of which I’ll be repeating here, because it’s a heavy week for the X-books – six of them are out, including three of the X-Men titles. A lesser man might think this was overkill, but no doubt somebody with a spreadsheet has managed to convince himself that it’s a wonderful idea. Luckily for our purposes, most of them are mid-storyline, but there’s still plenty to talk about here…
Magneto: Not a Hero #4 – The concluding part of Skottie Young and Clay Mann’s miniseries. And having re-read the whole thing, I can only say that this was a reasonable idea that needed a few more drafts.
House to Astonish Episode 79
Plenty to talk about this time round, with a look at all the news coming out of the first day of the Image Expo and the relaunch of Clint, as well as a thorough run through May’s solicitations. We’ve also got reviews of No Place Like Home, DC Universe Presents Challengers Of The Unknown and Glory, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe takes flight. All this plus a bulletproof shower curtain, Frankenstein’s sea shanties and the Glasgow Ravagers.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments thread, on Twitter, by email or on our Facebook fan page.
Charts – 19 February 2012
If you were expecting the top ten to be full of Whitney Houston songs – well, think again. The thing about artists like Whitney Houston is that they’ve made an awful lot of records. In her case, she’s had 32 hits in a 24-year chart career. And that means the posthumous downloads tend to be scattered among the big songs, so that they swamp the lower reaches rather than dominating top ten of the chart.
There are, of course, quite a few Whitney Houston songs on this week’s chart. But right at the top, it’s business as usual, with regular new singles entering at 1 and 2.
The X-Axis – 19 February 2012
If you’re looking for this weekend’s WWE preview, it’s one post down. Meanwhile – four X-books, plus a couple of others…
Generation Hope #16 – This is the penultimate issue, and so James Asmus grits his teeth and gets down to the necessary business of resolving the book’s main storyline – Hope’s influence over the other members of the team. That has to build to a climax at some point, and it makes sense to do it here, both to give this title some proper resolution, and to get it out of the way before Avengers vs X-Men.
Fortunately (well, from a certain perspective), Asmus has at least always known there was a good chance of getting axed at this point, so at least the exercise isn’t too rushed. On the other hand, it’s not entirely successful either; it’s never ideal to have an incoming writer resolve an inherited plot, and the noticeable tone shift between Gillen and Asmus’ issues doesn’t really help.
Roughly half of this issue is about Hope pondering whether she really wants Sebastian Shaw on her team, and stringing him along by claiming that, no, she’s got no idea who he is, and of course she’ll help him find out. The rest sees various characters deciding that the time has come to rein Hope in, for reasons of varying plausibility. Zero has the best case; he’s aggrieved by the interference with his own identity and makes the obvious point that if Hope has to stabilise every new mutant, then eventually she’ll end up in control of them all. Less convincingly, the story also tries to press the Stepford Cuckoos into service (on the logic that they disagree about Hope and the majority find this infuriating in itself) alongside the randoms from the previous issue. And the cliffhanger has unavoidable problems; they’re plainly not really going to kill her, so I can’t shake the feeling that the pay-off is going to be a bit of a cop-out.
