The X-Axis – 4 December 2011
This is about as quiet a week as you’re going to get. For shipping purposes, this was week five of November, and for some reason DC has decided that in order to keep its schedule nice and regular, it’s just not going to ship any of its regular DCU titles when a fifth week comes up. They’ve got a couple of minis out, and that’s really about it. As for the X-books, it’s a relatively light selection of three books. I shall take the industry’s invitation, and keep this one relatively short.
THUNDER Agents #1 – This is one of the handful of DC minis filling the release schedule. Perhaps this isn’t such a bad idea – it’s certainly getting a clear run with the DC readership.
Before the DCU reboot, Nick Spencer was getting decent reviews for his work on THUNDER Agents, and now they’re giving him another six-issue mini. At least, that’s how it’s being presented. But this doesn’t exactly read like a first issue; it reads like an issue of a series that’s already well under way. It’s not particularly interested in establishing the premise or introducing most of the title characters; a large chunk of the issue is given over to scenes between two characters called Toby and Colleen which certainly feel like they’re continuing a subplot about the characters’ relationship.
Charts – 27 November 2011
So far this year, we haven’t had a chart that was dominated by records associated with the X Factor. Not so coincidentally, ratings are down this year – albeit from stratospheric to merely very good indeed. But if you’ve been waiting for a chart dominated by the Spawn of Cowell, this would be it. Kind of.
First, however… Rihanna continues to defy gravity, as “We Found Love” remains at number 1, for a combined total of six weeks at number 1. Last week I claimed that five weeks was the biggest total of the year. That was wrong, because I forgot that “Someone Like You” by Adele also reached five weeks with an interruption. Thoughtfully, by hanging on for another week, Rihanna has rendered me retroactively correct. The last record to make seven weeks was “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis, at the tail end of 2007 – I don’t rate her chances of matching that, though, as her iTunes sales finally seem to be fading.
Two tracks from her new album also make the charts. Number 25 is the title track “Talk That Talk”, which has also got Jay-Z on it. No video, obviously, but her record company have put about half the album on YouTube as audio files. And number 39 is “You Da One”, which is in the other half, so I’ll leave you to search it out yourselves. Together with her guest appearance on “Take Care” by Drake (number 9), Rihanna once again accounts for 10% of the chart.
The X-Axis – 27 November 2011
Happy Thanksgiving, or whatever it is that Americans say to one another! If you check one post down, you’ll find this week’s podcast, now in association with CBR. It’s also something of an epic since it includes the interviews with Stephen Wacker, Nick Spencer and Kieron Gillen that Al taped at last week’s Thought Bubble convention. I usually leave the hype to Al, but you won’t want to miss this one, True Believers. I gather that’s how it’s done.
Meanwhile, I’ve got two weeks of X-books to catch up on (plus X-23 #16, which I think slipped through the net somewhere)…
Astonishing X-Men #44 – Another Regenesis issue, and another new creative team, as Greg Pak and Mike McKone take over. This is another of the Utopia titles, and quite what its remit is these days, heaven only knows. “Exalted” is a four-issue arc, so for all we know, this could turn out to be the book with rotating creators on each arc.
House to Astonish Episode 73
It’s our first podcast in conjunction with Comics Should Be Good, and it’s a bit of an epic – our longest ever episode, with discussion of the Marvel cancellation wave, the Booster Gold TV show, Image Comics’ convention and Ron Marz’s move off Voodoo, as well as a run through the solicitations. We’ve got reviews of Fantastic Four and Mudman, interviews with Nick Spencer, Stephen Wacker and Kieron Gillen recorded at Leeds’s Thought Bubble convention and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe hits the bottle. All this plus J Michael Straczynski’s tomb, Iceman being beaten with a giraffe and some of the more obscure levels of Sonic the Hedgehog.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments thread, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Good News, Everyone!
Hot on the heels of our third anniversary show, we’re pleased to be able to announce that House to Astonish has joined top-tier comics website Comic Book Resources, as a new regular feature of the Comics Should Be Good blog! We’re going to be posting our show there as of tomorrow’s episode, and we’re looking forward to being part of their line-up.
Now, don’t fret – this isn’t going to have an impact on the blog. You’ll still get the X-Axis, the wrestling write-ups and the chart posts, and the podcast will continue to be posted here too. You’ve just got another avenue by which you can get hold of the show now. The RSS feed will remain the same as well, and all it should mean for House to Astonish’s continued operation is that we’ll be in front of a lot more eyes.
We’ll see you all tomorrow, for an extra-long episode, featuring interviews with Nick Spencer, Stephen Wacker and Kieron Gillen, conducted at last weekend’s Thought Bubble convention.
Charts – 20 November 2011
If I’m not writing reviews, let’s see if I can get this up insanely early instead. (Ah, midweek chart update, you make this so much easier…) Settle down, because there’s a lot of videos in this one.
After last week’s snoozefest, this week’s new releases are a decidedly more interesting crop. There are also tons of them. But there’s one thing in common with last week’s chart – once again, a boy band who were number 1 in the midweeks have fallen short in the second half of the week and missed the number 1 slot by quite some way. We’ll come back to that.
Remarkably, “We Found Love” by Rihanna is still number 1. That’s now five weeks in total, which in the current market is sheer dominance. The last record to spend five weeks at number 1 (admittedly in a single run) was “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry in 2008.
That leaves the highest new entry to come in at number two – tying in nicely with my wrestling post, since it’s also being used as the theme for this year’s survivor series – is “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida. Unexpectedly, this isn’t bad. Naturally, there is an explanation for that, and I’ll come to that, because it’s quite an entertaining diversion in its own right.
Survivor Series 2011
Survivor Series holds a curious position in the WWE pay-per-view calendar. In theory, it’s one of the “big four” shows that have been around since the early days of wrestling PPV – the others being Wrestlemania, the Royal Rumble, and Summerslam. In practice, it’s been allowed to drift down in importance, and its gimmick of ten-man elimination matches has been steadily de-emphasised. It continues to be presented as a slightly more significant show than others, but in an increasingly half-hearted way.
So there was some surprise when it was announced that this show had been chosen for the Rock’s return match. While he’s certainly not going to return to any sort of regular wrestling schedule, he is going to wrestle John Cena in the main event at Wrestlemania 2012, and something had to be done to start the build-up for that. Hence his appearance on tonight’s show. Presumably, the theory is that Rock’s name will add more buys to Survivor Series than it would to January’s Royal Rumble. Or maybe he’s just not free in January.
However it ended up happening, Survivor Series 2011 is very much a one-match show – or even a half match show, since Rock’s opponents aren’t going to be shifting many tickets in their own right.
Housekeeping
Just so you know, no X-Axis this weekend – I won’t get the books until Monday.
We will, however, have a wrestling preview on Sunday night!
Charts – 13 November 2011
Rarely has a week with so many new releases been so utterly dull. There are seven new entries (plus one big climber), but with one exception, they’ve all dropped sharply on the midweeks.
In a display of unusual staying power, “We Found Love” by Rihanna returns to number 1 in its sixth week on release, having moved 1-1-1-3-2-1.
(The song starts at 0:50.)
This is a little unexpected, because the midweek charts had “Take A Chance on Me” by JLS in the lead. And the X Factor’s only successful band has a good track record for making number 1. But the second single from their new album is just a generically forgettable mid-tempo pop dirge. It’s inoffensive. It’s slightly above average. But the initial sales from the fanbase clearly didn’t hold up, since it winds up at number 2, and the midweeks show it dropping to 7.
The X-Axis – 13 November 2011
Thought for the day: Kade Kilgore may seem like a wildly implausible character, but then, we do live in a world where Silvio Berlusconi got elected three times.
It’s the third anniversary of the House to Astonish podcast, and you’ll find that episode just one post down! Meanwhile, after a fairly subdued few weeks, the X-office seems to be back up to full speed again. But there’s also a couple of other major releases from Marvel…
Avenging Spider-Man #1 – A monthly comic by Zeb Wells and Joe Madureira! Anyone seriously believe this is going to come out on schedule without a horde of fill-in artists by issue #6? (As near as I can make out, his record for a book that actually came out on time was five consecutive issues of Uncanny X-Men. And Salvador Larrocca had to help out on one of those.)
But cynicism, and awful title, notwithstanding, this de facto relaunch of Marvel Team-Up is quite good fun.
