House to Astonish Episode 75
Happy New Year (Nearly)! It’s our end-of-2011 wrap-up episode, with a special guest in the form of games blogger (and friend of the podcast) Cara Ellison. We’re talking about the big news stories of the year, such as the New 52, the new Ultimate Spider-Man, the closure of Wizard and the future of digital distribution. We’re also running through a few of the comics that have caught our fancy this year, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is puttin’ on the Ritz. All this plus super-heroes drinking their own pee, how the Hulk takes care of boiled eggs and a tiny little Sean Phillips living inside all of us.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available through the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Charts – Christmas Day 2011
Welcome to the strangest chart of the year.
As I’ve explained before, the British take the Christmas Number One inexplicably seriously. This made a degree of sense when people bought singles as stocking fillers, and the Christmas week was one of the biggest sales of the year. But the idea doesn’t go away. A generation grew up being told that the race for the Christmas Number One was a really, really big deal, and it’s stuck with them.
For years, however, the Christmas Number One has been dominated by the X Factor winners’ singles, which were always timed to enter at the top of the Christmas chart. This annoyed a lot of people, which is why 2009 saw a Facebook campaign launch “Killing In the Name” by Rage Against The Machine to the top of the charts. (Normal service was resumed in 2010.)
But this year is different. This year, the X Factor single came out a week earlier than usual, timed to reach number one in the week before Christmas. And that leaves the way for other people to have a go.
In fact, as it turns out, the X Factor schedule change was something of a red herring. Viewing figures are down this year; Little Mix were one of the lower selling winners. Even if it had come out in Christmas week, it would have been squashed flat by this year’s Christmas number one.
The X-Axis – Christmas 2011
The Internet has gone home for Christmas. But I’m still here, so here’s what we’re going to do. This week, Marvel have seen fit to release eight X-books, including the entire Wolverine line, which is certainly an interesting approach. Everything in moderation, eh? Thanks, Marvel! Since I’m going to be busy tomorrow, I’m going to bash through those today.
And our year-end podcast will hopefully be up some time on Friday. It’s going to be a sort of year in review thing.
But now, it’s overextended franchise time!
Daken: Dark Wolverine #18 – This is part three of “Pride Comes…”, and we’ve finally reached the point where the Runaways show up for more than a cameo. Which, of course, is why Marvel put them on the cover of the previous issue. Then again, I guess if you’re going to read this story, you probably should have started last issue – and in a way, I’m glad Rob Williams hasn’t tried to artificially expand the Runaways’ role to pad out the rest of the story. To be honest, I still have reservations about whether this story really needed to bring in plot elements from Runaways at all, which don’t feel particularly essential.
Charts – 18 December 2011
And lo, there was an entirely predictable number one single. The 2011 series of X Factor is over, and the triumphant winners are Little Mix, who receive the dubious reward of recording a cover version of “Cannonball”.
As I write this, they haven’t released the official video – though it’s a fairly safe bet that it will be a mixture of audition footage, the band standing in a studio in front of a back-projected screen of moving landscapes, and a pause just before the rousing key change to insert their victory announcement.
In the meantime, here they are on the final.
The X-Axis – 18 December 2011
It’s been two weeks… there are eight X-books to cover… let’s get down to it.
Avengers: X-Sanction #1 – And so it begins: the four-month prologue to the Avengers/X-Men crossover that Marvel are going to be hyping the hell out of in 2012.
So, then… Avengers vs X-Men. On the one hand, I’m keeping an open mind. After all, it’s not like you’d expect Marvel to do anything more at this stage than trail the high concept. But on the other hand, Marvel are trying to hype this as if the Avengers versus the X-Men was a big deal in its own right, and it’s really not. It’s the sort of thing you’d get on the cover strap line on a fill-in issue in the mid-80s. And with Civil War still fresh in the memory, surely it stands to reason that Avengers vs X-Men is something smaller. The Phoenix angle – that’s maybe a bigger deal. But Avengers vs X-Men, in itself… I don’t think that’s much of a draw in itself. We’ll see how it develops.
WWE TLC 2011
Reviews later. For now… let’s preview tonight’s WWE show. TLC (Tables Ladders & Chairs) is a hangover from the period when the company was experimenting with gimmicks for every show, and also from the days when they were a lot more cavalier about the injury risks in matches. TLC matches started as amped-up versions of the ladder match, with added weaponry and more convoluted stunts, some of which were genuinely unwise. Today’s product is a lot more restrained than that, and the random shoehorning of TLC matches into storylines that don’t call for them hasn’t helped either. The upshot is that the TLC show now sits at the tail end of the pay per view calendar in a rather toned down form.
The established set-up is to have one TLC match coupled with one ladder match (winner is the first person to climb the ladder and the retrieve the whatever), one tables match (winner is the first person to throw their opponent through a cheap plywood table – it made more sense when ECW originated the idea, since they actually used those tables for their timekeepers), and one chairs match (in which, uh, chairs are legal as weapons – nobody had ever heard of such a pointless gimmick until the WWE had to invent it for the purpose of this show).
Charts – 11 December 2011
We have something of a surprise at number 1, as “Wishing On A Star” by the X Factor Finalists fails to spend a second week at the top, despite having no major competition. That leaves the way clear for 2009’s X Factor alumni Olly Murs’ “Dance With Me Tonight”, which has already spent a fortnight locked at number 2, and now gives him a third number 1 to join “Please Don’t Let Me Go” and “Heart Skips A Beat”. It’s not very good, but here it is anyway.
Housekeeping
I’m not getting the X-books till Monday, so no reviews this weekend. I’m going to decorate the tree instead. Hopefully I’ll do something early next week.
Check below for this week’s podcast, though!
House to Astonish Episode 74
Surprise! Early episode! As we weren’t both going to be around in Edinburgh this weekend, we’ve got in a bit under the wire with a nice juicy hour and a quarter of chat on such topics as the passing of Jerry Robinson, the continuing New 52 creative reshuffle, the Kickstarter success of Ashes, the upcoming Marvel crossover event and Brian Michael Bendis’s move off the Avengers titles. We’ve also got reviews of Valen the Outcast, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and The Defenders, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is worth a thousand words.
The episode is here, or available on Mixcloud here, or you can use the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments thread, on Twitter, on our Facebook fan page or by email.
Charts – 4 December 2011
It took them long enough. But after all those weeks stuck behind Rihanna, The X Factor finally gets a number one single again. Yes, they’ve brought out the big guns – it’s the annual charity single by the finalists. When Remembrance Sunday came and went without a charity single, I wondered whether they were giving it a miss this year. Turns out, they’ve just moved on from soldiers. It’s children this year. You like children, don’t you? And to make extra specially sure that it definitely goes to Number 1, the single also features X Factor alumni JLS and One Direction.
The song this year is “Wishing On A Star”. The video is the same as every year, except with children this time. In a year’s time, when this shows up on the “every number one of the 2010s” marathons on the music channels, we’ll be able to play “who was that again?”
It goes without saying that it’s not very good – charity singles rarely are – but by the standards of X Factor charity releases, I guess it’s one of the better ones. Frankly, though, charity singles don’t exist to be bought on merit. They’re intended as social events. You buy them as a token of support. Judging them by conventional standards misses the point.
